In Afghanistan, a new Internet cafe and haven for women will have its grand opening in honor of International Women’s Day. The cafe, located in Kabul, is dedicated to Sahar Gul, an Afghan woman who was forced to marry at 14 and was abused by her in-laws. “She claimed not only her body and womanhood, but also her freedom as she resisted for months under torture and inhumane treatment,” writes Young Women for Change, the NGO hosting the event and opening the new cafe, which aims to help Afghan women communicate and connect.
Meanwhile, one event in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, takes friendly competition to a new level. The celebration includes contests in dry-flower arrangement, drama, cooking and dining. In Islamabad, a consortium of NGOs, government affiliates, and private enterprises are joining in the first “Women at Work” festival. The five-day celebration, kicking off on today, includes more than 100 stalls staffed by female workers from “all walks of life,” and also features traditional food, art, and entertainment.
The Turkmenistan government will honor mothers by awarding a special title and badge to women with eight or more children, according to The Times of Central Asia. More than 160 Turkmen women are expected to receive the award this year, which may include perks like free tooth replacements and public transportation.
Progress Watch:
+ Central Asia has achieved gender parity for secondary education, according to the 2011 Millennium Development Goal report.
– Data from 57 countries show that when women are a part of the police force, more citizens report incidents of sexual assault, according to UN Women. In South Asia, however, women make up, on average, 3 percent of the region’s police.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
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