In-depth

Sadiqa Mushtaq, businesswoman and director of a health institute in Afghanistan, is an emblematic figure of a journey of resilience and challenge. Mushtaq has always fought courageously to improve Afghan women’s living conditions, defying convention and facing adversity with her whole being. But the return of the Taliban to power shattered the dreams of an entire generation. Forced to leave her country, Mushtaq found refuge in Italy, but her indomitable spirit and determination have not waned. An interview.

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.

Despite political and social challenges, female Tunisian visual artists, actresses, and dancers are transforming the street into a space for creativity and freedom.

Peddling saleswomen in the Cairo metro system are classified as informal workers, operating without an official work contract or social insurance. This category of workers has been ignored for years. But the stories of these saleswomen are harsh, and they can be read on their faces, on the constant fear and anxiety legible in their features.

Female workers in the profession of harkous painting in Tunisia suffer from social rejection and are targeted by security forces. Though this profession is part of Tunisian heritage, it has not been given adequate care by the government, and the women who work in it face various violations in the streets, violations that are compounded by a miserable economic situation.

With her wrinkled face browned from the sun, her white hair and tired eyes, Umm Youssef watches the passersby in Bab Tuma Square in Damascus. Sometimes, she wanders away, but customers call her back and she rushes to make coffee in front of her car. Everything she needs is in that car, even the gas cylinder and material she needs to prepare hot drinks.

At present, women of 35 nationalities are working as sex workers in Rome. Who are these women? What brought them to the Italian capital? This investigation, conducted by two of our correspondents in Rome, Federica Araco and Nathalie Galesne, attempts to find the answers to these questions.

The Mediterranean basin is vast. Its scenes of everyday life, with women busy in the streets, are numerous. Despite the rights and freedoms that women have won in recent decades through feminist struggle, public space in many towns and villages on both shores of the Mediterranean is still a territory dominated by the masculine plural.

The impact of the Israeli war has been even more severe on the women in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), over 90% of women in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes to be housed in centers with no amenities. As a result, these women have found themselves having to live, work, and survive on the streets, with all the difficulties this entails.

More than one million people have been displaced in Lebanon, having left their homes to seek safety amid the escalation of military tensions and Israeli threats, especially after the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in the heart of Dahye, the southern suburbs of Beirut. This momentous event spread more terror and anxiety among the population given that it came along with tense Israeli threats to continue bombing more targets.