By Marley Gibbons
WeNews correspondent
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Official Saudi reaction to the women's driving campaign may be taking a harsher turn, with five women arrested this week. As usual, the e-mail alert about the situation came from Change.org, which is supporting the cause every way it can.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Five Saudi women who defied religious traditions by driving this week were detained by police in Jeddah on June 28, marking what may be a shift to harsher tactics by authorities who largely shrugged off the June 17 start of the driving campaign.
On June 29, it was not publicly known whether the women were still in police custody, according to news sources in Saudi Arabia.
News of all this was distributed via e-mail by Change.org, a politically progressive grassroots organization. Using social media to mobilize supporters, Change.org tabulates figures, issues press statements and rallies media attention for the Saudi women's right-to-drive campaign.

By Jessica Gray
WeNews correspondent
Monday, January 30, 2012
The venerable Egyptian women's rights advocacy, the Egyptian Feminist Union, is coming back to life amid a flowering of civil-society groups. But the road ahead isn't clear for a long-dormant organization that operated under British colonial rule.
The Egyptian Feminist Union, first founded in 1923, was shuttered just shy of 30 years later by the onset of Egyptian military rule. Now, after registering as a nonprofit a month ago, it is ramping up to give women the voice they've been lacking for so long, organizers say.
"We have to defend whatever rights we have and we have to go forward to equality and equity," says Hoda Badran, chair of the group, which represents a collection of nongovernmental organizations tackling women's issues in every governorate. "Women should have a say if any public issue or decision has to be made."

By Adel Mansur
WeNews correspondent
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
In a conservative Syrian town where women are discouraged from going out alone, young women are knocking on doors to recruit others to the resistance. They estimate a couple hundred women have joined a struggle that, nationwide, just claimed over 100 lives in 48 hours.
AL-MAADAMIYA, Syria (WOMENSENEWS)-- When the uprising erupted 10 months ago, Nour and three of her friends decided that women should be part of the resistance in this flashpoint town not far from the capital of Damascus.
"At the beginning of the uprising, we were only a few women," says Nour, a 22-year-old university student. "Now we are hundreds."

A global policy-making body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated exclusively to the promotion of gender equality and the advancement of women. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.