With so much attention paid to high-profile women in 2016, from Hillary Clinton to Wonder Woman, it's easy to lose sight of lesser-known women who are blazing a trail in low- and middle-income countries. In ways big and small, these women have moved the needle on gender equality by being activists, role models or simply taking …
Sitawa Wafula was diagnosed with epilepsy and bipolar disorder when she was just 17. Her experience of being a woman with a mental illness in Kenya has, at times, been harrowing. She once lost a job because she had a seizure, and had to drop out of university after being raped and finding nowhere to …
The sweet potato has a secret identity. It's not just the food upon which marshmallows are heaped and maple syrup is poured to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving. It is also a staple of the African diet. And Africans who eat it feel passionately about it. For some, it kindles warm memories. For some, it's …
n Rwanda, some consider feminism a dirty word, says NPR's Gregory Warner in his Invisibilia podcast. It's shorthand for too aggressive, too liberated, too selfish. Yet women in Rwanda hold 64 percent of the seats in parliament — more than any other country. What he found is that even in a country that seemingly embraces gender equality, there …
I was 9 years old when Nelson Mandela was sent to prison on Robben Island. As a boy, I learned about him in school, and I remember seeing reports about the anti-Apartheid movement on the evening news. Decades later, I got to meet him and work with him. In person he was even more inspiring …