Gender Policies

In December 2007, at the ANC’s Polokwane Conference, a resolution was accepted to create a Ministry of Women’s Affairs. While there have been many women in cabinet since the transition to democracy in 1994 (today women make up to 45 % of the deputies), this would be the first time that there would be a ministry tasked solely to deal with gender issues. Will the shift to a Women’s Ministry be integrated into the existing gender machinery in South Africa or is this the beginning of its dismantling?

On 10 February 2011, President Zuma presented his State of the Nation Address (SONA) to a joint sitting of parliament in Cape Town. The writers of this response to SONA look at the ‘road map‘ set out by Government for the next year, assessing it against progress on promises made (or not made) last year and how this will affect the social and economic status of women.

The campaign Combating Violence Against Women “Life without Violence and Discrimination is Possible” has been started by ten women organizations and hundreds of activists in eight Arab countries in cooperation with Heinrich Böll Foundation. Young directors were targeted as agents of change using alternative social media to lobby for combating violence against women in Egypt. See one of these produced short films here.

Facts and figures about the situation of women in Thailand. An overview about: The political situation, education, alphabetization, women in political decision-making bodies and women on the labor market.

A testimony from a young woman who was in Midan Al Tahrir in Cairo during the revolution in Egypt.

The article describes both the difficulties and opportunities confronting women’s organisations in the after math of the first Palestinian Authority after the signing of the Oslo Agreements on 1993.

 On the morning of December 30, 2010, the transformation of Israeli consciousness reached one of its peaks. That morning, the district court convicted former state president Moshe Katzav of serial sexual violence. After four consecutive years of struggle by women's organizations, after a struggle that began with a dubious glance at the complainants against the serial sex offender from the presidential residence, the head of the judges' panel declared that the man is a rapist and a sexual harasser.

Afrcia has seen the highest rate of increase for women in reprensentative roles over the past 40 years. But this developement has not yet contirbuted to governments that act more responsible for women. In this context the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation portrayed nine women in public bodies.

The publisher Urvashi Butalia is a pioneer of feminist literature, women's oral history and chronicler of the women's movement in India. A portrait.

 In Europe the Heinrich Böll Foundation has offices in Istanbul (Turkey), Belgrade (Serbia), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Zagreb (Croatia), Warsaw (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), Kiev (Ukraine), Moscow (Russia), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Brussels (Belgium). Its office in North America is located in Washington D.C.