Through my travels, meeting people after people, one question always pops up: you are travelling alone? And it is rarely a question. ‘You are travelling alone!’, as if incredible. I never know how to react. Being happy I am doing something ‘incredible’ or rather sad people think it is ‘incredible’..
I did not take the decision [...]

As I am about to leave Rio and take a flight to Argentina, I felt I had to leave few words here. I of course did not stay long enough in the country to get a fully accurate picture. And anyway, in a country so full of contrasts, one should be wary of pretending having [...]

Woman proudly standing in front of her shop, which she opened thanks to a micro loan.
Microfinance is really hype!
Microfinance has become in the recent years a major trend. While no microfinance institutions existed 35 years ago, today estimates account 7000 of them serving more than 20 million poor people. The microfinance global fame kept increasing the [...]

The Indian constitution granted Indian women with equal rights to men from the beginning. In spite of laws and schemes to recognize and improve the status of women in India, the structures and mechanisms for interventions are too bureaucratic. Worse, there is sometimes no budget allocation or no planned implementation. As a result, even women [...]

Source: UNDP 2009 and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt

Egypt ranks 120 out of 128 countries in terms of gender gap when it ranks 103 out of 184 countries for GDP*. This clearly shows that Egypt is doing much better in economics than in gender parity.
*Gender gap index are not available for [...]

I have been walking down Cairo’s streets for 3 days now and I am still looking for you. The only thing that seems available today out there are men willing to stare at me until I disappear from their sight. I’m quite sad to feel like I am one of the very few women out [...]