David Meth
United States/South Korea
“…she left an indelible memory and influenced my writing. I don’t know if she had the same effect on anyone else in the class, but to look at Korea in 2012, it seems that she and women like her must have had a very strong impact on change.”
***
Although this story goes back 42 years, it demonstrates how powerful a small act remains for the people who witness it, and how change may come in spite of what one person sees as a failure. I was teaching English …

An Anonymous woman from South Asia and Beverly Hill
“Imagine an affluent and well educated professional woman. This woman cherished her two daughters and loved them dearly, yet her friends and family always expressed pity or sympathy that she had only daughters.”
***
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 117 million women are “missing” in the world due to selective abortion, infanticide, gross neglect, and (for older women) lack of access to food and shelter.  (See announcement. http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/8542)  All these atrocities constitute gendercide, or femicide.  Each year we lose almost 2 million …

Emem Okon
Niger Delta, Nigeria
“The whole fight for resource control has led to the eruption and escalation of all manner of conflict and violence in the Niger Delta. It’s all about power and control in light of the oil revenue.”
***
I am a community mobilizer with a passion for mobilizing women for action, for peace, and for their rights. I work with Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre in oil-impacted towns and villages – that is, areas where the oil companies are drilling – in the Niger Delta.
Here, we have Shell, we …

Akhila Kolisetty
United States
“I want to be the woman who flies fearless into the unknown nevertheless, armed with a sense of casual self-confidence and a deep inner conviction that everything will be just fine. “
***
Ah, yes. The shallow pounding of the heart, the sweaty palms, the sudden inability to focus on the task at hand. The overwhelming feeling that everything might be lost, at any moment now.
Fear. A sadly familiar friend of mine. My worst enemy, turning me from a confident woman to a cowering child unable to make her own …