The Arab region continues to be among the most challenging in the world for the progress of women's rights. Equality remains elusive for women and vulnerable groups in the region due to traditional patriarchal cultures, protracted crises, lack of religious freedom, discriminatory legal frameworks, and chronic insecurity. The strongest indicator of peace in any country is in its treatment of women, but the story of women's rights in the region is one of patchy progress and major regress. And today, women are experiencing a massive backlash against their rights and fundamental freedoms.
 And yet, there is hope. Feminists--particularly young feminists--from the Arab region fight tirelessly for their rights and are leading movements around the region pushing for change. This story looks at the last 50 years of Arab feminism with a view to understanding what the next 50 years will hold. Built from hundreds of firsthand accounts with women in the region, this book brings together voices across the 22 Arab states to present new pathways to women's rights and gender equality.

Afghan women were at the forefront of global agendas in late 2001, fueled by a mix of media coverage, humanitarian intervention and military operations. Calls for "liberating" Afghan women were widespread. Women's roles in Afghanistan have long been politically divisive, marked by struggles between modernization and tradition. Women, politics, and the state have always been intertwined in Afghanistan, and conflicts have been fueled by attempts to challenge or change women's status. It may appear that we have come full circle twenty years later, in late 2021, when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban once more. Women's rights in Afghanistan have been stripped away, and any gains-however tenuous-now appear lost. Today, the country navigates both a humanitarian and a human rights crisis. This book measures the rhetoric of liberation and the physical and ideological occupations of Afghanistan over the twenty-year period from 2001 through 2021 through the voices, perspectives, and experiences of those who are implicated in this reality-Afghan women.