Tag: Women

ISLAMABAD - The women of childbearing age who double the amount of folic acid in their blood require food fortification of flour and other grains with vitamin-B to help reduce birth defects, health officials say. Officials at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention expect the payoff will be fewer spinal and brain defects. "We're talking about a simple intervention here that can prevent up to half of those birth defects," said Dr David Fleming, CDC deputy director for science

PAKPATTAN - At least four people, including three women, were abducted from various areas in Pakpattan. Reportedly, Zahida Parven along with her daughter was present at a van stand when Ismail along with his three unidentified accomplices abducted her daughter and took her to an unknown place. In the second incident, some unknown people abducted a daughter of Niaz Ahmed from M-Block Arifwala. In the third incident, four people, including Salman abducted a sister of Muhammad Kashif

KABUL - In a park where men are banned, surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire in a country embroiled in war, a group of Afghan women play a controversial game -- cricket.
Afghanistan's first national women's cricket team -- whose existence would be inconceivable under the hardline Taliban Islamists fighting to regain power -- are practising for their international debut.
The team, many of whom play in headscarves, will compete against other female sides from across

LAHORE - Around 641 women out of 2,670 failed in initial driving license tests while the City Traffic Police issued licenses to 2,029 women in 2010. Traffic police spokesman said that a large number of women had applied for obtaining driving licenses but during initial tests conducted at the Thokar Niaz Baig Centre under supervision of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Ali Iftikhar Jaffry, only 2,029 women succeeded. He said that the traffic police have chalked out a comprehensive

LAHORE - Women members of the provincial assembly (MPA) from both the treasury and opposition benches staged a walkout from the Punjab Assembly (PA) session over non-allocation of development funds accusing the Punjab government of gender discrimination and humiliating their mandate.
Issue of non-provision of funds to female legislators remained under discussion in the House and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) MPAs also boycotted the House proceedings to register their protest

MOSCOW - Russian women's figure-hugging outfits and full-on makeup got a pasting from a senior Russian Orthodox Church spokesman on Tuesday, as he slammed women for dressing as if they were strippers. Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the synod's department for relations between the church and society, called for a national "dress code" to tackle the issue in an open letter published by the Interfax news agency.
"There is a problem ... of people who mistake the street for a

LAHORE - The Punjab Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution to ensure women rights as provided by Islam to lessen violence. Opposition member Humaira Awais Shahid moved the resolution, in which she stated that incidents of violence against women were on the rise and one of the reasons for such violence was denial to women rights as provided by Islam. Some treasury members opposed the motion, which though was passed through voice voting.
The second resolution moved by Mehr

NAIROBI - Women living in areas controlled by Somalia's Islamists say they are increasingly the target of more draconian rules meted out by the rebels bent on enforcing their ideologies. In the latest decree by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group that governs most of southern Somalia, women in the seaside town of Kismayu have been banned from carrying out barter trade with the male crews of ships calling at the port. The women have also been told they cannot shake any male's hands in

KARACHI - Despite the government's efforts to improve the employment opportunities available to women, access to employment remains limited in most of the trades. Pakistan still remains lags in terms of gender gap and except for a few professions; women have very limited access to employment.
This was the consensus reached by participants of a seminar assessing gender inequality in the workforce. It was jointly organised by Sustainable Development Programme Institute (SDPI) and