Sex-for-Fish and the World’s Biggest Afro: Here's Around the World In 5
This ongoing series highlights women's news and information about foreign policy. This week’s post covers April 08 to April 14.
Global
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization said on Thursday that gender inequalities such as less access for women to knowledge and resources, and a higher unpaid care burden, account for a 24 per cent gap in productivity between women and men farmers on farms of equal size.
Over one third of the world’s working women are employed in agrifood systems, which include the production of food and non-food agricultural products, as well as related activities from food storage, transportation and processing to distribution.
Read more here.
Angola
Angolan security forces have been implicated in serious abuses against migrant women from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This week, local media reported that Angolan security force personnel and others raped Congolese women and children and otherwise abused them during mass expulsions of migrant workers over the past six months. A United Nations investigation has reportedly confirmed the abuses.
Read more here.
Morocco
TW: Rape
Three defendants accused of raping a Moroccan girl pleaded not guilty on Thursday as the case went to appeal, after their light sentences shocked the country.
The victim was only 11 when she was "repeatedly raped" and became pregnant, according to rights groups in the North African kingdom.
The legal team of the girl, who is now 12, had appealed after a lower court sentenced one of her three alleged attackers to two years in prison, and the others to 18 months each.
Read more here.
United States of America
Aevin Dugas has won Guinness world record for the third time in 13 years, for having the world’s largest afro with a circumference of 5ft 5in".
“I didn’t decide to grow an afro as much as I decided to go natural,” Aevin Dugas told Guinness World Records in an interview earlier this month. “It’s about pride in textured hair which leads to self-love.”
Read more here.
Malawi
In Malawi, female fish traders have begun mobilizing against transactional sex as a drop in fish population has lead to increased sex-for-fish requests.
A women’s cooperative called Titukulane—“uplift each other”—in the Chichewa language, is helping fishmongers diversify their income.
Read more here.