Issue

Women

Women and girls face a myriad of unique challenges around the globe. Although many countries around the world continue to work to mitigate the historic marginalization of and violence against women and girls, they are often disproportionately affected by war, climate change, poverty, industrialization, and global health crises.

In telling their stories Pulitzer Center journalists illuminate not only the violence and disparity faced by women and girls worldwide, but their resilience and strength in the face of it. Stories as varied as a young woman barricading herself in a hotel room in Bangkok to escape subjugation in Saudi Arabia to the women advocating for reproductive rights in Nigeria show women and girls constantly fighting to assert their own humanity.

The Pulitzer Center's work on women is supported by a partnership with PIMCO, which provides funding support for reporting projects, education outreach, and community engagement on issues related to gender equality and the economic empowerment of vulnerable girls and women. For more information, please see this announcement

 

 

Women

What Are They So Scared Of? I'm Just a Little Old Lady

I'm writing from the Congolese border town of Goma, overlooking the expansive waters of Lake Kivu and, in the near distance, the hills of Rwanda. Sunset here always seems to promise a tomorrow in which the region's sad history of violence might pass.

But over the weekend the sadness deepened when we learned that a plane crash robbed the region of one of its fiercest advocates, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch.

Nepal: Indentured Daughters

Olga Murray is fighting for the abolition of the kamlari, or the indentured servants in Nepal.

DRC: Rwanda arrives in the heart of FDLR territory

Michael Kavanagh, for the Pulitzer Center

Rwandan troops have marched into the heart of FDLR territory (Pinga, above) and the FDLR have fled into the forest. But now that the well-armed, disciplined RDF force has arrived, Congolese civilians are asking where the Congolese part of the joint Rwando-Congolese operation is. Behind the advancing column is a security vaccum....

Michael Kavanagh traveled to the DRC on a Pulitzer Center grant

Olga's Girls

For the past two decades, Sausalito's Olga Murray has worked to free Nepal's domestic slaves, or kamlaris. The girls are sold by their families to work in the homes of strangers.

The Indentured Daughters of Nepal

Anita Chaudhary, 18, speaks as if all emotion has been kicked out of her. She stares into the distance, her voice is barely a whisper, and her shoulders are slumped forward in defeat.