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Next time you are having dinner with a Bahraini dignitary, don't embarrass yourself by confusing the Queen's abaya with a burqa. More »
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Though security is improving in Iraq, conditions for women have worsened according to two new studies. Many Iraqi women, according to reports, are suffering from mental illness, lack of necessities, and a flourishing sex trade. More »
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It's a freedom many of us take for granted, but driving has just become possible again for some Iraqi women. Though women were once common on Iraqi roads — they're not legally barred from driving as they are in Saudi Arabia — the U.S. invasion and subsequent violence brought the number of women drivers to almost zero. Now that the streets are somewhat safer, a Washington Post article says women are learning to drive again, some out of a desire for empowerment, and some out of pure necessity. More »
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The Trades Union Congress in England is urging employers to stop making high-heels compulsory for female employees on grounds that it is sexist and can lead to health problems. • Comedian Kristen Schaal reveals that not only is she well-read in British dramatists, she used to practice stand-up in front of cows as a child. • In England a man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend's home after neighbors complained about their noisy sex and the girlfriend's general "nightmare neighbor" behavior. • Another plucky-grandma-fighting-a-thief story? Oh, yes. • More »
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With today's arrest of three women thought to be wannabe suicide bombers in Iraq, it's probably about time to wonder, again, what drives women to do this. We've posited a couple of different views on the topic recently as the violence committed by women in Iraq has increased sharply this year. But Faith at Muslimah Media Watch posits something else: the media is obsessed with women's personal motivations because of sexism. When you read about male suicide bombers, you read about politics, religion and ideology; when you read about women, there's lots of discussion of coercion and emotions. She's not entirely wrong on that, but is that sexism? More »
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Iraq is not an easy place to do much of anything these days, but perhaps most tragically, it is an impossible place to love, which is to say, "someone else." Shia men married to Sunni women are regularly forced to divorce their wives, and vice versa. Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father and brothers for nursing an imaginary love affair with a British soldier. Upon investigating this honor killing, the police congratulated Rand's father, who blamed his wife's lustful genes for polluting his daughter. And when said wife tried to leave him and flee to Jordan, she was assassinated. "The way he was speaking about his daughter and wife was like if they were animals and not human beaings," says journalist Afif Sarhan (above left), who spoke to Rand's father for the Guardian and was sitting in his native Brazil, probably nursing a cold beer on a beach somewhere, when he learned poor Rand's infatuation had claimed its second victim and rushed back to cover the story. "Love has to be calculated in Iraq today," a country in which Sarhan says quite simply, "they think of women as machines." More »
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• Bobby Brown says "I'm dating so it's not like I'm single." Defensive much, Bobby? [People]

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