After a few months of hiatus, Sawt Al Niswa (Women’s Voice), our feminist magazine is back.

This time, it’s bigger, better and online, serving the Arab region and the world.

Originally launched on March 8, 2009 by a group of Lebanon-based feminist women to coincide with International Women’s Day, Sawt Al Niswa (SAN) appeared in three monthly editions, before the editorial staff realized they had to make some changes to be able to keep it running.

“We had very limited resources,” explains SAN editor Sara Abu Ghazal, “but we knew it had a lot of potential because it was highly in demand, and people kept asking us to make it available online. So after much thinking and tweaking, we decided to turn into an e-zine to make it more accessible, more frequent, and more interactive without burning ourselves out in the process.”

SAN will be updated regularly with posts, articles, features, opinion pieces and commentaries in both Arabic and English.

The website is designed to function as a pool of knowledge. It hosts the various social and political commentaries by women, while questioning the kind of feminist discourse they want to speak and express themselves through.

The voice(s) within the website contribute to the construction of an Arab feminist discourse, reflecting a spectrum of Arab reality (ies), the same way Nasawiya and friends in the region reflect on Arab feminism attempts.

Sawt Al Niswa welcomes submissions investigating any topic from a feminist lens by writers, artists and activists in the Arab World, be they articles, reports, opinion pieces, photo and/or written essays, and artwork.

Please contact the editors at editor[@]sawtalniswa.com for more information about submissions and guidelines.

Now Lebanon’s Haeon Lee joined Nasawiya’s International Women’s Day march on Monday night, and blogged about the experience on the news outlet’s website.

Read her post entitled “We take back the night… for ALL our rights!” here.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Nasawiya partnered up with progressive Beirut-based daily Al-AKhbar, putting the focus on women in its March 8, 2010 issue.

Our members Leen Hashem and Sara Abu Ghazal contributed articles on sexual harassment (Juanito, the Neighborhood “Jagal” – Player) and racism and sexism in Lebanon (Lebanon and Women: Types of Female Citizens and Their Uses) respectively.

Also, as part of the tie-in, Nasawiya supporters Zeina Zaatari (Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa at the Global Fund for Women) and As’ad Abu Khalil a.k.a. The Angry Arab (Political Science Professor at California State University, Stanislaus and Visiting Professor at UC, Berkeley) shared some of their thoughts on women’s issues and feminism.

Ms. Zaatari wrote a commentary on Arab women’s work entitled “Notes on Arab Women’s Work”.

Mr. Abu Khalil reflected on International Women’s Day in an opinion piece entitled “International Women’s Day… Why?”

On April 23, 2009, the Feminist Collective blogged about the recent “Sois Belle et Vote” (Look Pretty and Vote) billboard campaign that sprouted across Lebanon in the past week. The blog is entitled Top 12 Reasons Why the Billboard Campaign: “Sois Belle et Vote” Is Offensive to Women. The post, which quickly spread over facebook and in the blogosphere, created much controversy around the sexism portrayed in the campaign.

Menassat.com featured an article today that speaks more about the Feminist Collective’s opinion of the ad. Read it here: http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/6423-be-beautiful-and-vote

Press coverage of our International Women’s Day activities – March 7 and 8, 2009:

- March 12 Al-Hayat:النسوية لمناصرة اللبنانية في الميدان

- March 11 Daily Star: Sit-ins look to highlight gender discrimination

- March 8 Al-Safir: المجموعة النسوية تسأل و إمرأة تجاوب

- March 7 Al Mustaqbal: النسوية تخترق شوارع بيروت في يوم المرأة:
لا للتمييز والعنف والقوانين الجائرة

- March 8 Al-Mustaqbal: النسوية تتابع حملة يوم المرأة: لسنا ضد الرجال بل ضد الذكورية

- March 8 Now Lebanon: A Woman’s Place?

- March 6 Daily Star: Feminists Take Aim at Male-Centered Politics

- March 5 Al-Akhbar: في يوم المرأة هيّا إلى الشارع