Dear Deeply Readers,
Welcome to the archives of Women’s Advancement Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 15, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on women’s economic advancement. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Language is both a means of assimilation and a source of exclusion for young Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh caught between a host country trying to prevent their integration and a home country that may prevent their return, writes Sunaina Kumar.
Humanitarian aid organizations tend to view men as more capable of coping with hardship and often overlook them as a vulnerable population of refugees, writes Marta Vidal. One group in Jordan is trying to change that.
Beirut’s Syrian refugee street children are not thieves, nor are they criminals, writes child protection specialist Cynthia Sleiman. Despite their hardships, they can be incredibly compassionate, and have hopes and fears just like everyone else.
An amendment to Myanmar’s land-ownership laws will make it nearly impossible for Rohingya refugees and Myanmar’s internally displaced to return to land they’ve tilled for generations, Peter Yeung reports.
An Israeli law enacted in mid-2017 amounts to a de facto salary cut for African asylum seekers, plunging the community into a financial crisis, reports Steven Davidson.
As we near the end of another eventful year for refugees and migration policy, our editors select 2018’s best stories and commentary on Refugees Deeply.
Peter Koang has been displaced three times since the war in South Sudan began. Each time, he managed to salvage his sewing machine, which now brings him a rare bit of stability at a time of fragile peace.
Educating India’s girls about menstruation and ending the existing culture of shame requires a multifaceted approach: The Indian government’s flagship toilet-building initiative is one step; another is getting people talking and tackling period-based taboos.
In Liberia, the Ebola outbreak drove steps to restore water pipes devastated during 14 years of civil war. As well as improving public health and productivity, access to clean, running water will, locals say, help keep girls in education.
With shortages looming, Colorado interests are struggling to finalize a drought contingency plan. The state is split between East and West over whether water saved to boost Lake Powell storage should be required or voluntary.
From small beginnings, a group of Kenyan women in a slum area have developed a thriving savings group that has brought a measure of financial independence and stability to their lives.
Gov. Jerry Brown terms out in two months, yet the giant twin tunnel project he has shepherded will still be plodding through several permitting steps. Critics say there are better ways to meet California’s long-term water needs.
The acre-foot yardstick has been a reliable standby for water agency officials to explain water use to the public. But it may be time to recalibrate our thinking on that as communities plan new development.
In Part 2 of a two-part report on the informal banks that help women secure financial stability, we look at the safeguards the women have put in place to protect their pooled resources.
Record heat and low rainfall have prompted drought emergency declarations in nearly a third of Oregon’s counties. Predicted El Niño conditions may mean there’s no relief in store this winter.
Agricultural interests are getting rich off temporary transfers of water to serve oil fracking wells. Even though water is considered a public resource in the state, Wyoming receives only tiny fees for each transfer.
Technology solutions to address water, sanitation and hygiene issues have had a litany of failures, but a few responses seem to be breaking the mold. One of the most exciting is the idea of decentralized systems.
In Part 1 of a two-part report on the informal banks that help women secure financial stability, we look at a savings group in Kenya that grants independence to the women who join it.
A little over a year after the Nepalese government outlawed the chhaupadi tradition that places restrictions on menstruating women, little has changed in practice. Activists say the beliefs underlying gender-based discrimination need to be addressed.
Dar Es Salaam is slowly overcoming the sexism that pervades the field of engineering, drawing on the skills of its women engineers in an effort to tackle the city’s sanitation challenges.
Smokers burn through 6 trillion cigarettes every year, and most are tossed into the environment. Butts contain microplastics and harmful chemicals, and new research suggests they may be directly toxic to wildlife. Efforts to curb butt litter have been largely futile.
Traumatized Afghan child soldiers who were forced to fight in Syria struggle to find protection in Europe’s asylum lottery.
Tensions are running high in India’s Khasi community, one of the world’s few remaining matrilineal societies, as a new bill seeks to prevent women from marrying non-tribal members.
Californians choose a new governor in just a few weeks. At a recent water conference in Sacramento, participants got a chance to offer the newbie some advice. There was plenty to be heard, as well as some wry humor.
A new study of women in lower socioeconomic circumstances in British Columbia found midwifery care to be an effective model of prenatal care, significantly lowering the likelihood of preterm births, and small and low birth-weight babies.
On a visit to one of Germany’s most radical refugee integration experiments, U.S. migration journalist and academic Daniela Gerson went in search of her family history and found an increasingly uneasy relationship between past and present.
Old assumptions aren’t working to predict today’s water supplies in the Rocky Mountain state, much less the future. Many planning scenarios ‘are actually pretty scary,’ says one water official.
In part 2 of our report on the low-income food sellers of Nairobi, we examine the threats facing the women who provide this vital link in the food-security chain – and what the future may hold for them.
Kenyan women operate low-cost food kiosks that fulfill an essential function: providing hot food to people too poor to buy fuel to cook their own meals. But they often struggle to make ends meet, not least because some of their clients are unable to pay.
State law does not currently allow surface water to be used for groundwater recharge if the goal is managing pollution, reversing subsidence or controlling salinity. That could be a problem as local agencies begin trying to make their groundwater use more sustainable.
The thousands of women who volunteer in low-income countries’ healthcare systems deserve proper training, appropriate remuneration and the chance to be heard in decision-making, argue Maisam Najafizada and Jill Allison of Memorial University, Newfoundland.
Amid concern about groundwater contamination, a ballot measure would force new fracking wells to keep their distance from homes. Another, sponsored by the oil industry, would force local government to compensate property owners for any lost value that results.
Married to a Dane, with a Danish son, Khoshnaw Nameq has been refused asylum in Denmark but cannot be deported to Iraq because Iraq will accept only voluntary returns. Now in Italy, he refuses to give up on a legal future in Europe.
Plans to transform the former home of the San Diego Chargers from a concrete wasteland are running into controversy: Despite public pronouncements, two competing ballot measures for a new stadium make no guarantees about public access to the San Diego River.
The $5 billion Sites Reservoir project recently won by far the largest award in a state funding competition. But separate state regulatory actions could limit how much water it can tap from the Sacramento River.
The state’s reservoirs have done their job to help water users survive record drought in 2018. Now they are almost totally dry, and tensions are building over the year ahead. ‘Climate change is really happening,’ one water official says.
In Dar es Salaam, a local charity is raising women traders’ awareness of their rights and helping survivors of abuse and assault bring the perpetrators to justice. Founder Jane Magigita says the scheme has led to a large decline in sexual violence in the city’s markets.
Women in Chhattisgarh state have branched out on their own as farmers rearing Kadaknath chickens, which are in great demand for their high-protein meat. A local enterprise scheme is boosting the women’s independence and has saved the birds from the edge of extinction.
Los Angeles is proposing to build a 20-mile pipeline to transform Hoover Dam into a pumped storage hydropower project. It’s certainly feasible – except for the ongoing political and legal conflict over the Colorado River.
A new study has revealed that monsoons in the Southwest have already become less common but more extreme in nature, posing new challenges for water managers eager to capture crucial runoff.
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