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WMC Women Under Siege
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WMC Women Under Siege
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WMC Women Under Siege
December 18, 2019 | Melody Chikono | Girls, Health, International
Zimbabwe’s high maternal mortality rate could push a lift on abortion restrictions

Zimbabwe's maternal mortality crisis is pushing the debate on abortion, but the current economic crisis and stigma stand in the way of legalization. 

WMC Women Under Siege
November 20, 2019 | Olivia Nightingale, Phyu Phyu Sann | Feminism, Gender-based violence, International, Politics, Violence against women
There can be no real accountability in Myanmar if women remain on the sidelines

Burmese women are critical to understanding a country whose people have endured systematic violence and repression for far too long. They can’t be forgotten.

WMC Women Under Siege
October 15, 2019 | Ann Deslandes | Arts and culture, Feminism, Gender-based violence, International, Misogyny, Violence against women
Mexico’s #MeToo reckoning is on its way, starting with its comedy scene

As the #MeToo movement steadily grows throughout Mexico, with thousands of actions, collectives, and ongoing projects in operation throughout the country, women are finding their power to fight back and build a society in which their lives are not in constant danger.

WMC Women Under Siege
October 06, 2019 | Gabriel Leão | Misogyny, Religion
On sexuality, gender, and the ‘true nature’ of women in fundamentalism: An interview with Dr. Maxine Margolis

Women Under Siege spoke with Dr. Maxine Margolis about the three religious fundamentalist communities she observes in her book Women in Fundamentalism: Modesty, Marriage and Motherhood and the role of gender in their ideologies.

WMC Women Under Siege
September 25, 2019 | Payal Dhar | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
Kashmir is under siege and women are in the crossfire

Women Under Siege discussed the disproportionate impact of the occupation on women with Kashmir scholars Ather Zia, founder of Kashmir Lit and co-founder of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, and Nitasha Kaul, a poet, novelist, artist, and associate professor of politics and international relations at the University of Westminster.

WMC Women Under Siege
August 29, 2019 | Melody Chikono | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
Zimbabwe’s clandestine cross-border trade economy puts women traders in harm’s way

Zimbabwe's economic crisis has forced women working in informal setups to the fringes, where they're often rendered vulnerable to physical and sexualized violence.

WMC Women Under Siege
August 20, 2019 | Gabriel Leão | Gender-based violence, Misogyny, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Violence against women
Understanding the rage of white male supremacy: An interview with Lisa Wade, PhD

Women Under Siege spoke with Lisa Wade, PhD, an associate professor of sociology at Occidental College and author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus, to better understand the relationship—and long history—between white supremacy, masculinity, and the American image.

WMC Women Under Siege
July 16, 2019 | Innocent Eteng |
Police raids in Abuja lead to arbitrary arrests for prostitution and sexual abuse in custody

Recent months have brought to light the arbitrary arrests of women in Abuja nightclubs on erroneous charges of prostitution. During arrest as well as in police custody, women have reported rape and sexual and physical assault by officers.

WMC Women Under Siege
July 02, 2019 | Maral Shafafy | Gender-based violence, International, Misogyny, Violence against women
Months after national elections, far-right party Vox still threatens gender justice in Spain

Spain's Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) party may have won in the country's general elections in April, and in European elections in May, but the threat of anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and anti-feminist party Vox looms large across the country, especially for Spain's women, who have so much more to lose than to gain.

WMC Women Under Siege
June 18, 2019 | Aisling Walsh | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
Maya Achi women demand justice for wartime sexualized violence in Guatemala

Decades after Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict, 36 Maya Achi women are seeking justice against the soldiers who raped them and the officials who gave them the orders. 

WMC Women Under Siege
June 12, 2019 | Remy Carreiro | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
Mass rape in Congo demands a more nuanced understanding than the cell phone in your pocket

It's tempting for Western audiences to believe that cell phones beget rape in Congo, but the real root causes of mass sexualized violence in the country require more nuance than that.

WMC Women Under Siege
June 05, 2019 | Tasmiha Khan | International, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Violence against women
The world looks on as China resumes its persecution of Uighurs: A conversation with Mihrigul Tursun

As Congress deliberates ratifying the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, Women Under Siege spoke with Mihrigul Tursun, a Uighur refugee, about her experience at what she describes as an "ethnic cleansing camp" for Uighurs in China's Xinjiang region.

WMC Women Under Siege
May 27, 2019 | Gabriel Leão | International, LGBTQIA, Violence against women
Brazil’s trans community fights for equality and safety in a country that ‘allows our extermination’

Brazil has maintained its place as first among countries with the highest murder rate of trans and gender-diverse peoples. In a country that remains deeply conservative and religious, and under a president who has openly targeted the LGBTQ community to "rescue our values," Brazil's trans community especially is fighting to exist, freely, openly, and safely.

WMC Women Under Siege
May 07, 2019 | Nikki Marczak , Sherizaan Minwalla, Johanna E. Foster | Gender-based violence, International, Media, Politics, Violence against women
On their own terms: a survivor-centered approach to sexual violence in conflict

If women have historically been silenced and ignored about experiences of conflict-related sexual violence, the inverse is now true: survivors are being pressured to share their stories, emphasizing heinous details of sexual abuse and little else.

WMC Women Under Siege
May 03, 2019 | Ann Deslandes | Feminism, International, Politics
Women shoulder the burden of internal displacement in Mexico

Organized criminal gangs displaced hundreds of families from their homes in the mountains of Guerrero state, Mexico. It's the women—mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and sisters alike—who are keeping their communities together.

WMC Women Under Siege
April 29, 2019 | Grant Shubin | WMC Loreen Arbus Journalism Program
Much more than language: How the U.S. denied survivors of rape in conflict lifesaving care

The Trump administration’s latest use of domestic politics to hold international rights hostage will cost women's lives.

WMC Women Under Siege
April 17, 2019 | Rachel Somerstein | International, Media
How women photographers can expand our view of conflict

Only a paltry number of women conflict photographers are in the field compared to men, which means that men are largely shaping our understanding of war. 

WMC Women Under Siege
March 25, 2019 | Cecilia Kamuputa | Gender-based violence, International, Politics, Violence against women
Zimbabwe’s security forces still enjoy impunity months after alleged rapes during crackdown on protests

Several women had reported being raped by security forces during the government crackdown on protests in January. Since then, no formal investigations have been undertaken; no formal independent complaints mechanism has been established; and the outrage has dissipated. 

WMC Women Under Siege
March 20, 2019 | Ann Deslandes | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
‘Calm down my love’: Feminist civil society fights back against kidnapping in Mexico City metro stations

As the number of cases of attempted kidnappings in metro stations mount, feminist civil society is fighting to create a safe city for women, against the inefficacy of law enforcement and a city government that appear ill-equipped to address the daily reality of violence committed against them in public.

WMC Women Under Siege
March 18, 2019 | Valentine Iwenwanne | International, Misogyny, Violence against women
‘Enough is enough’: Nigerian women fight sexual harassment and groping in markets

Sexual harassment and bullying of women have long been commonplace in Nigeria’s bustling markets. Now, women are leading the charge to change its culture.

WMC Women Under Siege
March 15, 2019 | Rebecca McCray | Misogyny
Meet the men who are dismantling toxic masculinity from behind bars

The women behind "The Feminist on Cellblock Y," which chronicles a classroom of male prisoners as they wrestle with vulnerability and the confines of masculine norms, speak with WMC Women Under Siege about their process, and what the broader public can learn at this critical moment from the men of Success Stories.

WMC Women Under Siege
March 14, 2019 | Ann Deslandes | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
One year after the assassination of Marielle Franco, ‘the struggle continues’

A year after Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco's murder, justice remains elusive, but her life and work live on with her supporters.  

WMC Women Under Siege
March 08, 2019 | Caroline Rothstein | Gender-based violence, Misogyny
I was harassed at an anti-harassment training

When toxic masculinity is present at an anti-harassment training.

WMC Women Under Siege
March 05, 2019 | Aisling Walsh | Gender-based violence, Girls, International, Violence against women
41 crosses, 56 lives: The struggle for truth and justice two years on from the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción fire

Two years after the Hogar Virgen de la Asunción orphanage fire in Guatemala, which killed 41 teenaged girls, the truth is still coming to light, and it's far more sinister with every detail.  

WMC Women Under Siege
March 01, 2019 | Laura Bates | Gender-based violence, Media
The impact of nurturing male violence

The portrayal of sexualized violence as an instinctive and inherent feature of masculinity leads has a potentially devastating impact on our society.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 26, 2019 | Megan Janetsky | Health, Immigration, International
Maternal mortality up 83% along Venezuela border as migrants flee country

As Venezuela spirals from rampant hyperinflation and violent political clashes, a health crisis has stricken the South American country, it’s the most vulnerable migrants—children, babies and pregnant women—who are being hit the hardest.

WMC Women Under Siege
February 24, 2019 | Raphael Tsavkko Garcia | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
Bolsonaro’s new gun law could put Brazil’s women in the line of fire

In January 2019, Brazil's newly-elected president Jair Bolsonaro signed a decree relaxing restrictions on gun ownership, a move that could endanger women further in a country ranked first in the world for firearm mortality and fifth for femicides.

About 
WMC Women Under Siege

WMC Women Under Siege shows how sexualized and other violence is being used to devastate women and tear apart communities around the world, conflict by conflict, from the Holocaust to Burma. 

WMC Women Under Siege 
Conflict Profiles

This ever-growing list of analyses explains how sexualized violence is used as a weapon of war.

WMC Women Under Siege 
Witness

The following testimonies come directly from women who have been affected by rape in war.

WMC Women Under Siege 
Articles

Browse the Women Under Siege archive.

WMC Women Under Siege
December 14, 2017 | Lauren Wolfe | Gender-based violence, Girls, International, Violence against women
Justice served in major Congo rape case, but danger isn’t over yet

This is the first time a mastermind of mass rape has been held legally responsible in DRC. But the story doesn’t end here. There are still a few major issues to watch.  

WMC Women Under Siege 
Crowd Map

Crowd map of sexualized violence in Syria

WMC Women Under Siege
December 13, 2017 | Lauren Wolfe | Gender-based violence, International, Violence against women
MP and militiamen convicted of crimes against humanity for rapes of nearly 50 girls in Kavumu

Today a historic conviction came down in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was the first time an official or commander has been convicted of masterminding rape in the country.

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