The ongoing series highlights women’s news and information from around the globe. This week’s post covered January 23-January 28.

United States of America

This week, a coalition of women’s rights- and reproductive rights-focused groups outlined their vision for the future of U.S. gender equality and the steps the 118th Congress can take, in a letter sent to leaders in both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as relevant committee chairs.

Their demands include health, reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy, economic security for women and families, policies to reduce gender-based violence, democracy reform and voting rights and immigration reform.

Read more here.

Sierra Leone

This week, Sierra Leone passed landmark legislation last week aimed at advancing women’s rights.

“[N]ow that we have a stable and peaceful Sierra Leone, we cannot afford to have women, who make up 52% of our population, not featuring prominently in politics and leadership,” said Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio.

The law called the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act (GEWE), requires public and private employers to reserve 30 per cent of jobs for women, including leadership positions and stipulates that 30 per cent of candidates put forward by any political party for parliamentary and local elections must be female.

Read more here.

Afghanistan

This week, UNESCO dedicated the International Day of Education to Afghan girls and women to voice concern over women’s condition and condemn the recent ban on women’s education in Afghanistan.

Women have been banned from receiving education at private and public universities in Afghanistan. The Taliban also levied a ban on girls from getting secondary education, prohibited entry in parks, and replaced the Women’s Ministry with the Moral Police (Ministry of Virtue and Vices).

Read more here.

Iran

This week, Iranian judicial officials sentenced a pregnant woman in her early-20s to death.

Shahla Abdi from the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan was arrested in mid-October at the peak of nationwide protests triggered by the September death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police.

Abdi is said to have received capital punishment for setting fire to a portrait of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding father of the Islamic Republic.

Read more here.

Kyrgyzstan

The Kyrgyzstan contestant at the Miss Universe beauty pageant contest has been compelled to issue an apology after using the event as an opportunity to highlight the problem of violence against women in her home country.

Altynai Botoyarova, 18, said in a January 17 Instagram post that she was sorry if her gesture in support of women’s rights offended anybody.

Botoyarova’s choice of the cape she wore during the swimsuit category of the pageant held on January 14. The cape carried the stylized image of a woman in traditional Kyrgyz dress being smothered by hands — an apparent allusion to the problem of gendered violence.

Read more here.