Pakistan will vote on May 11, and women, both as voters and as candidates, are the subject of many articles in the news last week. First there is the question of women voters: IPS speaks with several Pakistani women and asks them what women voters really want. But not all women get a chance to vote in Pakistan: in the tribal areas leaflets have been spread urging men to not allow women to cast votes or to be influenced by any candidate and one village, Meetala, made the news when its men declared that they had decided that that their women will not vote during the elections; some question the mental abilities of women to make such an important decision. This resistance against women and voting is not uncommon, especially in the tribal areas, and activists in Pakistan are planning to deploy protection teams in order to safeguard women voters. But women are not only voters: in Khyber Pakhtunwa province, women have been campaigning actively, because their party has been instructed to leave the volatile area and not campaign there. Ruquiya Hashmi is a female Shi’a Hazara candidate from Balochistan and has received death threats, but she is determined to keep going, as she is, in her own words, a brave woman. Hijra’s or shemales are now also allowed to run for elections, and NewStatesman profiles some of the transgender candidates.

A greeting card with a Muslim doll depicted as a terrorist, which was originally published in 2011, has not met many laughs among many Muslim Americans.

Many women in Mali have said to have become victims of rape and sexual violence during the rebel takeover of northern Mali last year, but aid workers say there has been little support and virtually no justice for these women so far.

Turkish women activists have gone to the streets to demand male brothels for women, which has further heated the debate whether Turkey should continue to run brothels.

Corruption in Afghanistan does not only negatively impact growth and development, it seriously affects the lives of many individuals, women in particular.

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested in Edinburgh, Scotland for shouting abuse to two Muslim women and trying to remove their hijabs.

A gendarme officer has been formally indicted on rape charges related to the 28 September 2009 massacre in Conakry, Guinea. It is estimated that 109 women were raped that day and over 150 people died.

Saudi Arabia allows private girls’ schools to offer some sports, as long as it in line with the Shari’a law.

Underage marriage is now punishable by law in Uzbekistan, with fines and even jail.

A remark during a news conference by the Egyptian Information Minister aimed a female journalist is just another example of how huge the problem of sexual harassment is in Egypt. And no apology issued, nor needed, according to the Minister.

Women activists who speak out against the practice of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) say that they face danger and abuse from their own communities.

The government in Tajikistan is proposing to ban marriages between first cousins in order to reduce the number of babies born with birth defects, but the proposed ban is already facing resistance in the country.

A severe water crisis at six camps for displaced people in Darfur, Sudan, is putting many women at risk for rape and sexual assault, as they have to walk now an average of 3 to 5 km in order to fetch water.

Qantara.de speaks to Tunisian activist Saloua Guiga about the current situation of women in the North African country.

Six Uyghur women are held by Chinese authorities, after a violent crackdown on a Uyghur protest outside a mosque in Shanghai; the women were street sellers, who not normally sell their food after Friday prayers, but are now forbidden to do so.

Due to a lack of resources, and often a lack of support too, most divorced Muslim women in India end up in poverty and despair.

Afghanistan’s minister of education has said that he will punish schoolgirls who allegedly suffer from poisoning; many officials believe that these cases are actually examples of temporary psychological illnesses, as there are often no traces of poison found.

Despite stringent laws, polygamy, or rather polygyny, has regained popularity in Morocco, with almost half of the population supporting the practice.

The vast majority of Germany’s population regards Islam as a misogynist religion, but in reality the image of “oppressed Muslim women” does not correspond with the real life situation in which most Muslim women in Germany find themselves.

In the not-so-distant past, Iraqi women enjoyed more equality and opportunities than many other women in the region, according UN data, but due to the invasion and insecurity the status of Iraqi women has deteriorated.

Kuwait launches sports clubs for women, a first for the Gulf nation.

The factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed hundreds of (predominantly female) workers has so far not resulted in any meaningful changes in the international labour practices of U.S. based clothing companies.

A report by the International Rescue Committee tells of the sexual violence many Syrian women and girls cite as the main reason for fleeing the country.

The ethnic Hazara community in Pakistan, who are predominantly Shi’a, have been attacked for over two decades, but last week’s attack killed over a hundred Hazaras, leaving behind many women and families in desperate conditions.

Indonesia has reacted in outrage on the “joke” by high court judge Daming Sunusi, who stated that both victim and rapist enjoy the act, and therefore the rapist should not receive the death penalty ever. One article in the Jakarta Post claims that this is just an example of the weakened position of women in contemporary Indonesian society.

The BBC features an article on the relatively large role women play in the Kurdish paramilitary organisation, the PKK.

Halimah Yacob is elected to be the first woman speaker in Singapore’s parliament.

In an interview with IPS Hanaa Edwar, head of Iraqi Women Network and general secretary of Al Amal Association, speaks about the struggle for a (new) liberation for Iraqi women.

Doaa Abdallah, a secular Egyptian, shares her concerns about the new Egyptian constitution for the status Egyptian women in general.

According to figures by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Jewish women are giving birth to more children now compared to 1995, but the number of births per Muslim woman has declined significantly.

Soccer associations in the Middle East are launching a campaign to put women’s soccer on par with men’s soccer.

Over 20% of the female population of Chad between 15 and 49 is said to be victim of violence of all sorts on a daily basis, and there are very few legal texts to help them defend themselves.

Last Friday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia appointed women to a fifth of the seats in the advisory Shura council.

Zahra Eshragi, the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, has said in a rare interview that “the country is facing a critical situation”.

Kuwait’s justice ministry is now accepting for the first time applications by women for the post of prosecutor.

Muslim women, who wear the hijab and are coming to Russia to work, are now allowed to wear their headscarves in pictures taken for the identification papers.

K-pop, Korean pop music, is getting increasingly popular among young, mainly female, Malaysians.

Chechnya’s administration denies claims by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCRIF) that there are heavy restrictions on religious freedom in the country and that women and girls are forced to wear a headscarf.

Al-Akhbar features an article on the not-so-typical Egyptian women activists.

Tracy McVeigh speaks for The Observer to seven Afghan women, who rebuilt their lives after the Taliban oppression about their future in their Afghanistan.

A village council/panchayat in the Udaipur region in India has banned girls from using cell phones and women from singing and dancing at weddings.

A 5-year-old girl from Philadelphia, USA, was kidnapped from her school by a woman wearing a full face veil, and has been found the following morning at a local playground. The woman claimed to be the mother of the girl, who is also fully veiled. Investigation is still continuing.

According to a Kyrgyz website an increasing number of Central Asian women are smuggled to Arab Gulf countries for sexual commercial exploitation and labor.

According to an article on Al-Arabiya, grants an Egyptian bank loans to young farmers to encourage polygamy to fight spinsterhood.

The execution of Rizana Nafeek in Saudi Arabia last week, has sparked attention for the dozen of other (female) migrant workers on death row, the majority of them (at least 45) are Indonesian nationals.

This week was the second anniversary of the Arab Spring. Several articles were dedicated to the relationship between women and the Arab Spring movement. One article by the BBC focuses on the fact that women still are waiting for their benefits from the revolution and an article by WeNews mentions the increasing conservative Islamist influence in post-revolutionary countries.

Last Tuesday 6 polio vaccination volunteers were killed in Pakistan, 5 of whom were female. On Wednesday another female polio worker and her driver were killed, and on Thursday another man died, adding to a total of 9 dead, of whom 6 women. Two female polio workers speak out against the attacks and the anti-polio campaign in Pakistan has been suspended, for now.

With an increasing number of Tajik women migrating to find work outside the country, an increasing number of children are being left behind too. More often than not the burden of looking after these children falls on their grandmothers.

Gender activists on the islands of Zanzibar, Tanzania, claim that gender based violence is a major hurdle on the road to development in the region.

An Egyptian court sentenced an Islamic preacher to a year in prison for publicly defaming prominent actress Elham Shaheen.

According to reports and accounts by local doctors, the health of Kashmiri women is deteriorating and it is said that there might be a link to the conflict.

A new film in Morocco called Maouchouma or Tattooed, features the story of a tattoo on a (often nude) female body, has therefore caused a lot of controversy in the country.

This month Sudani folk singer Hawa al Tagtaga passed away; she was considered a nationalist activist and even, I quote, a “feminist”. May she rest in peace.

More underage Muslim girls in Malaysia are getting married.

UNHCR shares the story of Muslim widow Misho, who has fled her home in Burma’s Rakhine state about six months ago and who is since praying to return to her home.

An explosion in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province killed at least 10 girls, who were gathering firewood.

In the 17 years since the war ended in Bosnia, only 40 rape cases have been prosecuted, it is estimated that about 35,000 (predominantly Muslim) women have been raped during the war and without these women receiving justice, the peace process is considered to be incomplete.

On December 19, Tajik parliament passed the first Tajik law on domestic violence.

The Nourah Bint Abdul Rahman University for women in Saudi Arabia has banned female students from wearing trousers, skirts made of mesh and clothing that is not black or grey.

Palestinian female journalists, who choose to wear the (wrong kind of) hijab, find it difficult to pursue a career in television.

Kenya’s Chief Justice has called on Muslim leaders to allow women to serve in Islamic (kadhi) courts.

Yemeni Khadija al-Salami has made a documentary called The Scream on the important role Yemeni women played in the year-long revolt.

Once female Afghan police was a sign of new and better times to come, but the difficult reality for female police officers in the country makes it hard to believe in a future for the female cop in Afghanistan.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, women’s rights activists endure death threats and attacks, but their ordeals are not covered in the local media.

After studying the repercussions of oral and unilateral talaqs (divorce by the husband in Islamic law) in India for months, Muslim women groups demand a ban on both the oral and the unilateral talaq.

The Canadian Supreme Court decided yesterday whether or not a witness can testify in a case while wearing niqab. The woman in question is testifying against two men, who allegedly sexually assaulted her when she was a child. On Thursday the Supreme Court came to a rare split decision on the fate of niqabs in court, allowing the face veil in some cases.

Nassima Akhtar is a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, who loves to surf, defying the norms of her conservative community.

During a press conference in Moscow, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that he is opposed to the hijab, saying it is not part of Russian Islam and therefore an alien tradition.

Nusrat Bano Seher Abbasi is to become the first female opposition leader in the Pakistan’s Sindh Assembly.

Rumors are spreading that the Syrian opposition groups that have taken charge of the countryside of Aleppo are deploying a religious police force to enforce new laws that make prayer obligatory and ban women from driving.

Many Afghan couples still get married by giving each other verbal consent, something that makes divorce, especially when initiated by a woman, more difficult.

According to Saudi activist Tahani al-Juhni, Saudi women will be safer if they are allowed to drive.