http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png http://jezebel.com/tag/burkina faso http://jezebel.com/tag/burkina faso

When Senegalese activist Marietou Diarra began to tell the story of the two daughters she lost to genital mutilation, it didn't matter that almost no one else in the room spoke Wolof. You could have heard a pin drop. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5493063&view=rss&microfeed=true

Skyrocketing prices for food and fuel have pushed more than 130 million poor people across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America deeper into poverty in the past year, and guess who are the "hungriest" and "skinniest" victims? Women. Malnutrition among females is emerging as a "hidden consequence" of the food crisis, reports Kevin Sullivan for the Washington Post. Sullivan's focus is the African nation of Burkina Faso, where he follows the life of a woman named Fanta Lingani, who starts her backbreaking streetsweeping job at 4:30 am and makes $10 a month. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5027300&view=rss&microfeed=true

Today in where your cosmetics come from: John Liebhardt from Global Voices Online reports that Western beauty companies "have been falling over themselves trying to purchase fresh raw shea from cooperatives of African women." He links to an American expat in Burkina Faso, who deconstructs a self-congratulatory ad for L'Occitane's shea butter products and issues this correction: women are not making money from the collection of nuts from shea trees, but the processing of them into butter, which, she points out, "is lots of work...there's not one word about the labor actually involved. It is invisible." (More on that labor and the profits made from it here and here.) [Global Voices Online, Burkina Mom's Life In Africa] More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=389378&view=rss&microfeed=true