Since the first IPO in the U.S around 1783, roughly 25 Black women leaders have been at the helm. From Madam C.J. Walker to Aicha Evans, these 50 Black women have successfully subverted the status quo.

Twenty-five years after the United Nations’ Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action pledged to take the necessary steps to “remove all obstacles to gender equality and the advancement and empowerment of women,” support for gender equality is strong around the globe. Across 34 countries surveyed by Pew Research Center, a median of 94% think it is important for women in their country to have the same rights as men, with 74% saying this is very important.

But if there are two, her odds go way up.

Grief-stricken after his daughter’s death, the chief of Piplantri village declared that every newborn girl would have a tree planted in her honour. In the process, he sowed the seeds of cultural, environmental and political revolution. Shyam Sunder Paliwal knows his way through the trees. Pushing through low branches, he reaches a shady copse where a profusion of different varieties grow. Every evening, he comes here on his motorbike to see one tree in particular...

African intellectuals tend to blame the West for the slave trade, but I knew that white traders couldn’t have loaded their ships without help from Africans like my great-grandfather.

An estimated 239,000 girls under the age of five die in India each year due to neglect linked to gender discrimination, a new study has found. The figure, which amounts to 2.4 million deaths a decade, does not include pre-natal mortality rates. "Gender-based discrimination towards girls doesn't simply prevent them from being born, it may also precipitate the death of those who are born," wrote the study's co-researcher Christophe Guilmoto in the Lancet medical journal.

A 19-year-old Sudanese woman has been condemned to death by a court in Omdurman for stabbing to death the husband to whom she was forcibly married, who she says raped her with assistance of his family. The death penalty for Noura Hussein was confirmed by a judge on Thursday after her husband’s family rejected the possibility of financial compensation and instead asked for her to be executed.

Iceland has become the first country in the world to make it illegal to pay men more than women. Under the legislation, companies and government agencies with more than 25 employees will be required to obtain government certification for their equal-pay policies. Those failing to demonstrate pay equality will face fines.