by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

• Dermitáge's ads promise anti-aging with airbrushed before and after images. •

Now, nearing forty—and completely uninterested in make-up—I’m the target age for the exorbitantly priced cosmetics that promise to work against the effects of time. Although politically correct advertisers today claim to embrace the beauty in aging women, the forty-something models look like they’re twenty-five. The fifty-somethings barely have grey hair and look like me on a good day. The sixty-somethings are ridiculously airbrushed and women in their seventies are noticeably absent.

by Marianne Taflinger
- USA -

In Sweden, a doctor delivers Sari, and her family celebrates what will be the beginning of a long life, probably 83 years or more. She’ll attend at least 17 years of school and if she chooses to have children, they’ll be born when she wants them to be born, thanks to convenient and cheap contraceptives. If she has a baby, she’ll take off 15 weeks of work and still earn 80% of her salary. Sari is virtually guaranteed to make it to age 5 without any health complications and enroll in secondary school. Swedish society provides great health care and education that eases both mothers’ and girls’ lives.

By contrast, Adame will live a far more perilous life. Having been born in Niger, she has a high probability of dying before age 5. Like two thirds of all children born in Niger, no “skilled birth attendant” was present at her delivery. It’s likely that Adame will attend only 3 grades in school, and that she will die by age 45, living a life half as long than if she had been born in Sweden. Adame’s mother is practically guaranteed to lose at least one child and has a nine out of ten probability that she will lose 2 children in her lifetime. Due to the lack of contraception, Adame will likely have more siblings than her family can afford. And there’s a strong chance that Adame will suffer from malnutrition and lack a sufficient supply of water.

by Bia Assevero
- USA -

Ruud Gullit knows his soccer.

He’s Dutch for one thing, and the Dutch have produced some of the most spectacular talents that the modern era of the game has ever seen. From Van Basten to Bergkamp, from Rijkaard to Gullit himself, the Dutch have redefined the game more than once.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

In the early hours of April 25th, Tariro Gweru and her husband Wellington awoke to a deafening knock on their bedroom hut. Wellington says he identified the frantic voices of his two friends, Simon Takavada and Misheck Dzikamai, got up and quickly opened the door.

As his two friends made their way breathlessly into his house, Wellington knew there was something seriously wrong. Simon and Misheck indeed had bad news: while coming home after having a beer, the two spotted trucks packed with ZANU PF youths, war veterans and soldiers making their way to their village.

by Sarah Wyatt
- USA -

Years of hardship and backbreaking labor in the riot-stricken slums of Kibera in south Kenya have worn 18 year old Eshe Koome to the bone. A single mother of two, she walked out on her abusive husband and survived for two years as a daily wage laborer, loading vegetables and other goods for sale.

• Eshe is now able to earn a living wage at Kazuri. Photograph by Sarah Wyatt. •

Eshe's story captures in a nutshell how a group of formerly indigent, urban women operates a business for themselves. The Kazuri Bead Factory, located in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, is unique in that it is Kenya’s first visitors’ attraction of its kind, created for and by women. Founded by Lady Susan Wood in 1975, the company is known for its beautiful, hand-painted beads made from the authentic clay from the Mt. Kenya area. Kazuri (Swahili for “small and beautiful”), also produces a number of other goods popular with tourists including pottery, hand-beaded sandals and purses. The beads are often featured on three-dimensional art cards and can also be found in shadowboxes.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know just how bad. Colonel Ann Wright, retired US Army, grabbed the audience’s attention at a panel called Women in the Military, hosted last month by Women Center Stage in New York City, when she said that one in three women in the military is sexually abused by her male colleagues. Ann wants to see huge signs displaying this statistic in every recruiting office, to let young women know what to expect if they sign up.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe’s largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings.

Unfortunately, this does not make the pain at the pump pulsing through the nation any more bearable. Apparently, Exxon could have made more profit, had it not chosen to hold back further gas price hikes. Instead, earnings in its refining business (which converts crude oil to gallons of useable gas) weren’t as strong as it had wanted. Yes, that’s right – Exxon would have made even more money had they passed more pain onto the public. They were just being “nice.” Right.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

What makes The Linguists so entertaining are the stars’ contagious love of linguistics; between them they speak over 25 languages and have devoted their professional lives to traveling around the world – on screen they venture to Siberia, India, and Bolivia – documenting obscure languages on the verge of extinction. Their work is exciting because Harrison and Anderson are up against the clock: currently there over 7,000 languages spoken around the world, but one is disappearing every two weeks.

by Ellen Snortland
- USA -

Let me introduce you to my friend John Stoltenberg, a warm and generous American man full of good will and humor, who is also one of the United States’ leading male feminists, widely respected as a thoughtful activist, scholar, author, and magazine editor, all at once. He holds degrees in divinity and fine arts.

He was the husband of Andrea Dworkin, the noted radical American feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she believed was linked with rape and other forms of violence against women. Andrea died prematurely at 58 in April 2005.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Revealing the ending of a film is downright mean, but it’s obvious that Oscar-nominated director Morgan Spurlock does not find Osama Bin Laden in his latest documentary film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?. Spurlock’s claim to fame is having exclusively eaten McDonald's for 30 days in his hit 2004 documentary Super Size Me, so I didn’t initially want to run to the theater when I heard he had made a documentary featuring him trekking around the Middle East on a fruitless search for Osama Bin Laden – despite the clever promotional milk carton with Bin Laden’s missing person photo on it that I received at the Sundance Film Festival. (Quite frankly, at that moment I was more interested in the chocolate inside the milk carton.)

But after seeing the documentary, I have to admit that I enjoyed it, simplistic though it may be. The appeal of the film, which is an inevitable hit now that it’s screening at theaters everywhere, is Spurlock’s style: he’s more of a goofy explorer on a madcap adventure than an award-winning foreign correspondent. Within the first few minutes, the film has a musical number with Osama Bin Laden and his followers dancing to MC Hammer’s early 1990’s hit “U Can’t Touch This.”

by Pushpa Iyer
- USA -

Two weeks ago, late in the evening, Soma Bakshi, an educated, middle class young woman in Kolkata was set on fire by her husband and in-laws. This “incident” was preceded by a severe beating given to her by her husband and her mother-in-law. The only witness in this case was her two and half year old son, who recounted the beatings his mother received that night from his father and grandmother to the police. The boy still recalls his mother’s tortured cries. Soma, severely burnt, was kept gasping for life in the house without any attempt to seek medical assistance. Her parents, who arrived at the home some hours later after receiving news of an “accident,” rushed her to the hospital, where she died after a week of agony.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

"The moment the people stop supporting you, that's the moment you should quit politics."

These were the seemingly reasonable and even wise words President Robert Mugabe used in the Highfield suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, when he cast his vote on March 29th. He was responding to a journalist who asked whether he would step down in the event of defeat in the presidential election. Until Saturday it looked as if Mugabe might have spoken too soon.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

The experiences and emotions of young American girls are much more complicated, and even tragic, than most people, particularly men, would assume. Girls as young as eight are regularly confronting low self-esteem, eating disorders, broken families, peer rejection, drug addiction, and the eternal search of finding their place in an unforgiving world. But every summer girls from 8 to 18 find a reprieve from their daily struggles for one week at a truly original venue: Rock 'n’ Roll Camp for Girls!

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

While children around the world are taught that God loves all people, even the most pious of nations repress homosexuals; marginalize and abuse women; neglect the rights of children and wage war on fellow human beings often because of their different beliefs, races and ethnicities.

As I write this, devout Jews and Muslims—encouraged by their religious leaders and imbalanced politics—continue to kill each other in The Middle East. American politicians who identify themselves as Christian and insert “God bless America” in every speech pass legislation that slashes funds to educate America’s children while pumping money into a war that kills children in Iraq. Chinese police, some of whom may very well be Buddhists, continue daily to club Tibetan monks and nuns protesting abuses of human rights.

by Megan Tady
- USA –

For Maureen Mullaney, helping her kids with their homework takes more than just proofreading their papers. Fed up with a painfully slow dial-up Internet connection at home, Mullaney often drives her children into town, where they sit outside the library to pick up a wireless Internet signal on their laptops in order to do research.

“How silly is it that in this day and age, you have to get in your car in the middle of winter, drive to the center of town, sit in your car with it running, while your child can research the traditional clothing of Chile?” asks Mullaney, who lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Mullaney says her children’s ability to do research for school reports is “ridiculously hampered” by their dial-up connection, particularly when they need to include images with their assignments. “You can’t see [the images] quickly,” Mullaney says. “You click on one and then you wait. And oh, that’s the wrong one.”

The process can be so frustrating, that sometimes Mullaney and her kids give up. “I just say, ‘Forget it, I’ll look it up for you when I get to work,’” she says. “So then I end up doing their research? What’s that all about?”

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the war: his father’s name had never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in combat. The truth, discovered years later, was that Captain Wajda had been shot cold-bloodedly by the Soviet secret police in a prison in the western Soviet Union. Andrzej and around 22,000 other people had waited for their loved ones in vain.

by Michelle Chen
- USA -

Tanya McLeod’s marriage was hurting, but her husband thought he could make it up to her when he brought her a cute dog as a “peace offering.” The family stayed together and the dog grew up alongside her children—until the day her husband decided to destroy the animal with his bare hands.

At that point, McLeod says, “I knew that he was capable of killing me.”

by Katie Thompson
- USA -

Elections invite a whirlwind of campaign promises: some that are feasible, some that are not, and some that will be forgotten on Inauguration Day. One of the most prominent issues for the Democratic candidates has been healthcare reform, a campaign promise the American people definitely won’t let the new president forget. In the United States, the National Coalition on Health Care says 47 million people are without health care coverage. In addition, according to Consumer Reports, 43% of Americans who have health insurance coverage say their coverage is inadequate to deal with an expensive medical emergency. Clearly, healthcare is an issue that requires a solution. The real question is whether a national healthcare plan is a feasible solution. I would argue that it is not.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

“Rape has always been used as a weapon of war” is the opening line of the new documentary film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. For 76 minutes the film exposes the incredibly brutal civil war that has raged for over ten years in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Not only have over four million people been killed, but over 250,000 women and girls have been raped, kidnapped, and tortured.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

On Saturday, March 29th, I was one of the millions of Zimbabweans who went to the polls to choose a new president. I cast my vote to choose both a lower and upper house of assembly representative in parliament and a councilor in my constituency.

• MDC opposition, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, claims victory in Zimbabwe's presidential election. Photograph courtesy of the Movement for Democratic Change. •

They say “your vote is secret” but mine is not: I went and voted President Robert Mugabe and his cronies out of power. I believe their time is up -- they have done enough damage to our lives. This is why I woke up at 5am on Saturday morning to vote, just like many other disheartened Zimbabweans who are ready for change. I was determined to vote dictatorship and tyranny out.

And, so far it appears we have succeeded.

by Ellen Snortland
- USA -

Midnight. Intensely urban downtown neighborhood in Los Angeles where the alleys reek of urine and garbage. Dark Craftsman house in the Carpenter-Gothic style. My home. I cross the threshold and meet an interrupted burglar who raises his knife, ready to plunge it into my throat or heart. My scream is so intense he drops his knife, grabs his ears and runs like hell. “Thank you, mister,” I neglect to yell, because I was yet to know the impact this event would have on the balance of my life.

by Eva Sohlman
- Sweden -

What kind of leader does tomorrow’s America need? And who among the presidential candidates is best suited to meet the challenges that the next leader of the world’s superpower will face? These are some of the questions American voters face as they are showered with political propaganda and a pumping, election-driven news flow where “experience” is weighed against “leadership for change.”

“What type of leader is needed depends entirely on the times,” says US anthropologist, psychoanalyst and leadership consultant Michael Maccoby, whose 35 years studying leadership have broken ground within the field. His recently published book, “The Leaders We Need and What Makes Us Follow,” finds him being frequently interviewed by American media about leadership styles, and which of the current candidates is best suited for the presidency.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

Tinashe Choruma and his wife Irene live in the suburb of Epworth here in the capital, Harare, where many of city's poor reside. The housing is poorly constructed - some homes are made from mud and pole, with no clean water or sanitation services. The suburb could very much pass as a shanty town.

Tinashe came to the city in 2000 from rural Murehwa to take up a job as a librarian; he was staying with his wife and their two children in the high-density suburb of Glen View. But after Robert Mugabe ordered all "illegal" houses to be destroyed during Operation Murambatsvina, the backyard cottage he used to call home was destroyed. He was left homeless.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

My sister doesn’t have any children. Neither does my female cousin, nor my sister-in-law. A close female friend of mine from college wants kids but her relationship woes and her career haven’t allowed for an ideal child-rearing situation. Here in Germany, I’m a statistical rarity, as a university-educated woman with three children. Exercising the right to intellectually choose motherhood, or not, has marked my generation of women.

I recently Googled “reasons not to have kids” and got 26,700 hits. Many of the results linked to Corinne Maier’s bestseller from last summer, No Kid: 40 Reasons for Not Having Children. (Maier, by the way, is a mother of two.) Then there is childfreebychoice.com, which declares the resources of its website are “designed to be a haven for those who prefer to be childfree throughout their lives.” There are also countless parenting and women’s blogs where 30 – 40 something aged women (and men) explain their reasons against procreating.

by Sandra Nyaira
- UK -

On a chilly Saturday afternoon as rain drizzles continually from the grey London skies, Trafalgar Square slowly fills with women from all walks of life, braving the winds and cold. Exiled Zimbabwean men and women now living in the United Kingdom descend on the Square from all directions to support the fight for democracy in Zimbabwe, to restore dignity to its long-suffering women and to highlight their vital role in the country’s struggle for freedom.