Women

"In Haiti, the majority of the people working the land are women. Not only are they there during planting, weeding and harvesting, but they also play a role in transforming and marketing food products. They're involved in the entire agricultural production process. This is why we call women the poto mitan, central pillar, of the country." - Iderle Brénus

Janet Biehl, author of a newly published book about Vermont social ecologist Murray Bookchin (Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin), speaks about her recent visit to Rojava, Kurdistan where Kurdish men and women have organized themselves into a democratic autonomous region based in part on principles advanced by Bookchin.

The global press has been heralding the December 13, 2015, vote in Saudi Arabia as a breakthrough for women, since it's the first time in history that Saudi women have been allowed to vote. But is this vote really a significant step forward?

Amid the sea of strife, brutality, and cruelty that surrounds them, the people of Rojava are creating a gender-equal society—and are arming themselves equally to fight ISIS and all the forces that are intent on destroying such a beacon of hope. The agent of this revolution is not the proletariat: it is the woman.

"We are here to speak for them, to call for their release. When there is an injustice, silence is complicity," said Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch and a decades-long advocate for human rights in Latin America. He was referring to the 17 women, known as Las 17, who are currently serving 30-year sentences in prison for having miscarriages in El Salvador.

Volumes have been written about the Mayan indigenous Zapatista social movement of Chiapas, Mexico since they made their first public appearance on January 1, 1994. However, until now, we were missing the direct voices of women from the communities themselves. Hilary Klein’s Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories reveals their perspectives as contemporary indigenous women who are active subjects together with men in shared processes of change and liberation.