Women | featured news

"Listen to my story! Listen to my pain and suffering!" Afghanistan's first female rapper Sosan Firooz pleads into her microphone. With her first rap song, the outspoken 23-year-old singer is making history in her homeland where society frowns on women who take the stage. She is already shunned by some of her relatives.

Left infertile after being abducted and raped as an 8-year-old back in 1990, Jennifer Schuett despaired of ever having a normal life – and a baby of her own. Schuett’s fallopian tubes had become blocked as a result of an infection she caught from her rapist, and her only hope was very expensive in-vitro fertilization.

Britain's new health secretary has said he favors reducing the time limit for women to have abortions from 24 to 12 weeks, sparking criticism from opposition lawmakers and women's rights activists....

President Barack Obama on Monday sought to woo women voters at a taping of the daytime talk show "The View," by flirting with his wife and bearing gifts for the hosts, but he could not escape tough questions on the economy that have dominated the election.

The past 12 months have seen a series of notable successes for African women - with two Nobel Peace prizes, a second president and the first female head of the African Union Commission. For the BBC's Africa Debate programme, Malawian women's rights campaigner Jessie Kabwila asks if Africa's women are on the rise.

Junot Díaz’s story collection “This Is How You Lose Her” follows the developing life of the Dominican-American character Yunior, particularly his relations with women.

Two Swedish women may be able to bear children using the wombs which carried them, doctors say, hailing the world's first mother-daughter uterus transplants.

The patchwork quilt that is the Democratic Party base -- women, Latinos, African-Americans -- will be on full display at Tuesday night's opening session of the national party convention. The highlight will be a prime-time address by First Lady Michelle Obama who is expected to play the same role Ann Romney did one week ago at the GOP gathering in Tampa: eschewing hard-edged politics for a soft-focus testimonial to her husband.

From hospital milk banks to pages on Facebook, more new moms are using another mother's donated breast milk to feed their babies.

Women voters care most about the economy and jobs. But with a critical caveat: nine out of 10 women say that a candidate must "understand women." To do that requires an acknowledgment of two things: that women's economic security -- by almost every measure -- still lags behind that of male counterparts and that their economic security is inextricably tied to their ability to control their health, including reproductive choices. And on those points, no illusions and tradesman's tricks can obscure the fact that the GOP agenda fails the test.