Popping back in to kick a hornet’s nest 🙃 My novels will not be submitted for the Women’s Prize. Their origin story is that men were excluding them w/the Booker, so when FRESHWATER was longlisted, I hoped it was a sign that they gave thought to who *they* were excluding.
— akwaeke emezi (@azemezi) October 5, 2020
- The Women’s Prize for Fiction issued a statement saying that entrants must be legally defined as female. In response, Akwaeke Emezi, an author longlisted for the prize in 2019, declines to submit future work in protest over request for details of their sex “as defined by law”.
- The “shadow pandemic” of violence against women throughout Africa has escalated since the start of the pandemic, with Liberia reporting a 50 per cent increase in sex-based violence and Nigeria declaring a state of emergency against rape.
- A female journalist, Basma Mustafa, was forcibly disappeared in Egypt for her work covering the suppression of protests against the regime of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
- A six-year-old rape victim in India has succumbed to her injuries, adding to mounting tension between citizens and government officials.
- Amnesty International called on Bangladeshi authorities to take action after an online video emerged of a group of men stripping and beating a woman for nearly half an hour.
- Fawzia Koofi, Afghanistan’s first female Deputy Speaker in Parliament, was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work campaigning for women’s rights.