US women’s colleges appeal to Muslims

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Many colleges and universities in the US compete fiercely for foreign students. But there’s one group of potential students that until recently went largely untapped: women from the Arab and Muslim World. More of them are now attending women’s colleges here, as The World’s Katy Clark discovered. Download MP3 (Photo of Mount Holyoke freshman Lubna Saqran by Katy Clark)

• Web extra: Katy Clark gets an earful from two Mount Holyoke freshmen about the thing they hate most about life at an American college.
• More of Katy’s photos

Rape as a weapon of war

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The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to tackle a particularly disturbing tactic of war this week: the use of rape as a weapon. Perhaps the worst recent cases have been in places like eastern Congo, where armed groups have used rape to terrorize communities. Jeb Sharp talks with Anne-Marie Goetz of UNIFEM, the UN’s development agency for women. Download MP3 (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

• Jeb Sharp on Clinton’s demand for an end of the sexual abuse (Aug)
• Jeb Sharp’s award-winning series on rape in Congo (2008)
• UNIFEM homepage

Women and the U.N., comparing economic crises, Bertolt Brecht

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The U.N. General Assembly authorized a new U.N. agency for women last week. We’ll look at the years of advocacy that led to it. The World’s Jason Margolis helps answer a listener’s question about how this economic crisis compares to past ones, especially in terms of U.S. debt. And The World’s Alex Gallafent rereads Bertolt Brecht on the Crash of 1929.

UN creates agency dedicated to women’s issues

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The UN General Assembly has authorized the establishment of a new UN agency devoted to women. Women’s advocates hope the new agency will make women’s concerns more of a priority at the UN. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.

Hope for abused Iraqi women

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with reporter Anna Badkhen about her article “Baghdad Underground,” which chronicles a secret network of shelters for abused women in Iraq.

Jobs that women can’t do in Russia

Despite Russia’s constitutional guarantee of equal employment for men and women, there is a list of 460 jobs that are legally off limits to women. Correspondent Jessica Golloher tells us about some of them. Listen

Three memoirs by women

Author and critic Helen Epstein talks to World Books Editor Bill Marx about three recent memoirs by women, each with a distinctive international flavor. The pair evaluate Jan Wong’s “A Comrade Lost and Found,” Christina Thompson’s “Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All,” and Jane Alison’s “The Sisters Antipodes.”