In-depth

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.

On both shores of the Mediterranean, one constant emerges: women's bodies are a social, political, aesthetic, ethical, and economic issue. Caught between social control, submission, and emancipation, how do women navigate this tyranny of appearance? Here's an in-depth exploration of a topic that has deeply inspired our editorial team.

In Syria, many laws rely on physical criteria to determine women's rights, rather than principles of citizenship and human rights. This approach only deepens gender inequality.

From ancestral traditions to contemporary standards, the path to self-acceptance is one taken by women in general, and Maghrebi women in particular. Below is the story of a journey from tender childhood memories to internal rebellion against established norms.

In one day’s time, from July 26 to August 11, the Paris Olympic Games open. For the first time in history, the Games are welcoming an equal number of male and female competitors. Despite the various obstacles, here and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, more than ever before sport is an engine of emancipation for women. This dossier on Women and Sports demonstrates as much.

After being kept on the sidelines of sporting activities for centuries, women made a massive entry into the world of sport. Still now, however, this world continues to heavily discriminate against them: from the hyper-sexualization of their athletic bodies to the negation of these bodies as experiencing menstrual cycles, types of discrimination against female athletes abound.

In Italy, racist incidents against female champions of African origin representing the country in national and international competitions are increasingly frequent. With the Paris Olympics coming up, it is as good a time as any to reassert that racism is a serious threat to women’s right to sport, a right which was hard-earned over the course of a good hundred years.

It’s the second consecutive season in which the Cannes Film Festival has honored women and their struggles. This high mass of world cinema also seems to be intent on highlighting works lensed with the female gaze, even when they are produced by men.

Emna Mrabet is a lecturer in the cinema department of Paris 8 University, where her teaching focuses on the aesthetics of cinema, documentary production, and film analysis. The emphasis of her research is on the question of identity among filmmakers with a background of immigration from North Africa, particularly in the films of Tunisian female directors. Together with Ons Kammoun, professor and researcher in cinema in Tunis, she is currently organizing a conference in Tunis on June 13-14 on “Gender and emancipation in Arab cinema.”