By Kirthi Jayakumar Abeokuta Women’s Union. [Women in African History: an E-Learning Tool; CC-BY-SA ,UNESCO.] Under Nigerian colonial rule, the economic lives of women took a beating: their economic roles were on the decline, and they were subject to heavy taxation (Byfield 2003). Women were given no place to participate in local government or public life, but were expected to be individual tax paying citizens. Responding to this with protests, the women subverted colonial economic dominance and made their way into local government through the Abeokuta Women’s Revolt, or the Egba Women’s Tax ..read more

As told to Kirthi Jayakumar Dr. Divya M. Persaud (she/her) is a planetary geologist. Her doctoral thesis centered on processing and visualising 3D terrain data as virtual outcrops to investigate the exposed layers in Sakarya Vallis in Gale Crater, Mars. She has an interest in developing novel methods of applying remote sensing datasets to mission planning and science targeting for surface exploration. Dr. Persaud is also an active composer, poet, and speaker passionate about science communication and ethics in space exploration. She is co-founder and co-organiser of Space Science in Context, a ..read more

By Kirthi Jayakumar One of the world’s most famous natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef, is home to about 400 different types of coral, 1500 species of fish, and 4000 types of mollusc. A site of tremendous scientific interest as a habitat for species such as the sea cow (dugong) and the large sea turtle – both of which are threatened with extinction (UNESCO n.d.), is highly vulnerable to harm in the form of erosion, the impact of global warming, and pollution, among other things. Over the past three decades, the Reef has lost half its coral cover, suffered starfish outbreaks as a result of ..read more

By Naureen Hossain Communities affected by nuclear testing, many originating from island nations in the South Pacific, share their experiences at the Nuclear Survivors Forum. Credit: ICAN / Haruka Sakaguchi The language used in the Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is unambiguous on its focus of the grave humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. The TPNW also recognizes the influence of the public conscience “in the furthering of the principles of humanity as evidenced by the call for total elimination of nuclear weapons”. This public conscience has been shaped by what we kno ..read more

By Kirthi Jayakumar The impact of colonization, occupation, and apartheid is an imprint that is transmitted across generations, manifesting in the form of pain, grief, behaviours, and patterns – all originating from the common root of unhealed trauma. Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye leaves you smarting as she brings to attention what this looks like in the life of a woman and her family. On the surface, Evil Eye comes across as a story of domestic violence, racism, relationship challenges, complex mother-daughter dynamics, and intergenerational trauma. Scratch deeper, and bear in mind events unfolding in ..read more

By Kirthi Jayakumar Source: ISPN Over three decades years ago, Dona Beliza Costa Souza and a group of women – all quebradeiras de coco babassu – or babassu nutbreakers, began their movement to stand up to land owners who were rapidly buying up forestlands and destroying the tree cover to expand their cattle ranches in Brazil (Coimbra, 2015). In the thirty-odd years that followed, the women have continued to resist the encroachment of their lands, creating a powerful grass-roots movement that changed the law and takes on government plans to expand agricultural endeavours into their lands. They ..read more

As told to Kirthi Jayakumar Natalie Treviño is a space theorist and award-winning educator and is currently a postdoc at the Open University in the UK as part of the Space Ethics Group. Her PhD is from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University in London, Ontario. Her research focuses on how the colonial legacy of space exploration limits the vastness of the futures in space. As an educator, Natalie loves to create dynamic learning opportunities to engage students with ideas, actions, and possibilities. Natalie is pictured before a backdrop presenting an artistic r ..read more

By Kirthi Jayakumar The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), founded in 2003, campaigns for women's rights and against political Islam in Iraq. When it was founded by Yanar Mohammed in 2003, it was a movement in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by the US and UK (Kofoed 2004). In more recent times, OWFI offered direct support to women who were isolated by their families or who had faced harm owing to the ISIS’ conduct (OWFI 2017). Resisting colonialism  Aside from militarization and violence, as part of its occupation of Iraq, the US also operated a divide-and-rule approach ..read more

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons Afghan women carry stories of sorrow and resilience. Credit: Learning Together “When the sun rises in the morning, I see the light but I don’t feel like I’m having a bright day. I think about how different these days are from our past days”. These are the words of Sharifa, 48, an Afghan mother of five as she recounts her life story wrought by the Taliban when they regained power two years ago. Tears streamed down her face as she narrate ..read more

By Kirthi Jayakumar Palestinian women have played a central and key role in resisting Israeli occupation and apartheid, and the resulting violence, displacement, human rights violations, and injustices. One of their vehicles of both resistance and preservation of their cultural heritage is Tatreez, a form of embroidery.   Preserving culture and practicing resistance Tatreez, Arabic for “embroidery” dates back to the 11th century at least (Afikra, n.d.). Dating back to the Canaanites, Tatreez emerged as a means for documenting significant occasions through design (Shang, 2023). A unique s ..read more