Support the journalists who bring The World to you. For a limited time, when you make a gift in any amount, you’ll help us unlock $30,000 in challenge funds.
In a neighborhood peppered with beauty shops, what makes Shamso Hair Studio and Spa unique is not the silver and black décor — or even the henna body art or the hammam steam spa — it is who is allowed in and who is not.
How does the portrayal of these women stack up against the historical reality? Might the fancy frocks, extravagant palaces and sexual triangles distract viewers from their true historical significance?
There’s a debate going on among athletes sparked by the controversial comments of tennis legend Martina Navratilova. She says it’s cheating when transgender women compete in women’s sports.
Divorce in Turkey is on the rise, even as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government offers tax-breaks and incentives to women to get married and start a family. Despite those efforts, women are getting married older and the rate of marriage is declining.
At the Riyadh mall, it's evident that work culture is evolving in Saudi Arabia. Today, more young people — especially women — are doing nontraditional jobs once eschewed by the kingdom’s residents.
The private Facebook group was was made up of prominent French journalists — mostly men — who were behind a wave of online insults aimed at women, the LGBTQIA+ community, people of color, and other minority groups.
In 2015, the Saudi government launched an app called Abhser — which roughly translates to “yes sir” — that allows men to grant some of those permissions through clicks and swipes. But the app is also helping some Saudi women escape the country.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has called for larger Hungarian families to combat the country's low birth rate and shrinking labor force. In exchange, he's willing to provide financial benefits and programs for women like loan expansion programs, subsidies for cars, and no required income tax for women with four or more children.
Hungarian women face social expectations that they should be caretakers instead of breadwinners. The country also has the lowest rate of women in government in the European Union — just 12 percent.
