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Every year in Italy, around 63,000 women terminate their pregnancies, embarking on a long and painful process in which humiliation, judgment, and violence are all too common. The conscientious objection of healthcare workers forces many to undertake expensive travel or resort to clandestine procedures, while ultraconservative Catholic groups, present in gynecology departments and clinics, try by every possible means to dissuade those who have decided to have an abortion.

Undoubtedly, Mediterranean women artists—those who venture further than most—have raised new questions, provoked ruptures, and expanded the horizons of what’s possible. This feature sheds light on the bold, boundary-pushing approaches of some of them.

The Sletate project offers innovative accessories inspired by women’s bodies and reproductive organs, combining art with health and sexual awareness and contributing to building broad feminist solidarity.

In the 2000s, two women photographers, Meriem Bouderbala and Hela Ammar, challenged long-held beliefs and introduced a new perspective on the female body and how it is represented. Both from Tunis, their works now circulate around the world.

At the Museo di Roma, in the Palazzo Braschi, an exhibition dedicated to women artists who lived and worked in the Eternal City between the 16th and 19th centuries concluded at the end of May. After centuries of historiographical silence, this exhibition reconstructs the creative and biographical trajectories of 56 of these women, who until now had been forgotten or invisible in a field traditionally dominated by men.

The creation of botanical gardens in semi-public spaces, such as residential buildings, has long been a losing battle in Tunis, hindered by residents’ struggles to agree on even the most basic principles of communal living. Yet, thanks to the unwavering determination and strong character of Faiza Majri, what once seemed an unattainable dream has become a reality. Today, the entrance of her building has been transformed into a thriving green oasis, all sparked by a single bold initiative—the planting of one citrus tree.

Ecofeminism, as defined in intellectual and activist circles in the Global North, is presented as an inclusive, progressive alternative to solve ecological crises. But what does it mean, concretely, for women in the Global South? Why does this vision, imported by international NGOs, often feel synonymous with guilt and injunctions rather than justice and reparation?

The fight to save the planet, linked to women’s rights, began to shake the world in the 1970s. Yet a number of books and publications, both old and recent, show that the first ecofeminists were probably witches, those women of unconquered power (1) despite the inquisition they endured.

While terms like war, rearmament, and nuclear umbrella have been dominating the headlines since Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second term as president of the United States on January 20, 2025, Medfeminiswiya has chosen to take a step in the opposite direction and talk about ecofeminism this March 8, for International Women’s Day.

1975, 1982, 2006, 2024… dates that resonate like the sound of a shrill war alarm in the minds and memories of the people living in the tiny country that is Lebanon. Caught between the region’s war-mongering powers—Israel and Iran in particular—Lebanon witnesses deadly tensions every time the region flares up.