Leymah Gbowee, a speaker at TED2012, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her pivotal role with Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, the women's peace movement that, in 2003, helped end the four-year-long Second Liberian Civil War. She shared the award with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of Liberia. In the wake of the controversy around Sirleaf's reelection, Gbowee was asked by the president to start a "national peace and reconciliation initiative" to address the growing political and ideological tensions within the country.

This morning, some 15,000 runners are warming up ahead of the Manchester Road Race, a 4.75 mile circuit in New London, Connecticut. One runner is wearing the same blue tunic she wore 50 years ago, when she defied a ban on female participation in long distance running, and set a precedent that changed the face of the sport.

In 1990, a group of women in Saudi Arabia did something almost completely unheard of. They got behind the wheels of their cars and they drove. Afterward, they were severely punished, and both the women and the movement fell quiet. However, last month, a single mother named Manal Al-Shafif picked up the torch. Angry and frustrated, she uploaded footage of herself driving. As with the women before her, she was severely punished. This time, however, the movement did not fall quiet.

In 2005, at the age of 27, Malalai Joya became the youngest person ever elected to Afghanistan's National Assembly. In 2007, she was booted from the Parliament after publicly criticizing Afghan warlords. Now, Joya is an activist for women and democracy, and she remains a fierce critic of both Hamid Karzai's government and the presence of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Joya shares her story and explains why she has been called "the bravest woman in Afghanistan." 

As the Middle East convulses with more unrest this Friday we want revisit Egypt’s push for democracy and the role that women are playing in the movement there.  It was only three days ago on International Women’s Day that women protesting for equal rights in Egypt’s Tahrir square were attacked and sexually harassed.  What steps should they be taking next in the pro-democracy movement?

Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Recently, women in the Middle East and North Africa, have been standing up and pushing for democratic change and equal rights. What lies ahead for women in these countries as they grapple with forming new, more democratic, governments?

In Tehran, a private organization has introduced a catalog of appropriate haircuts for men, the first such code since the Islamic Revolutions of 1979. The list, presented by the Veil and Modesty Festival, has not been officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Culture, though they say approval is "pending."

For the first time in U.S. history, women have become the majority in the workforce. And Tuesday’s primary elections showed us that women can dominate in politics too. In California, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman both won their Republican nominations for Senate and governor, respectively. Sen. Blanche Lincoln secured the Democratic ticket in Arkansas. Plus Nikki Haley was victorious in South Carolina. The Washington Post’s website is leading with a headline that suggests this may be the “year of the women.”  Hanna Rosin wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled, "The End of Men." Politics aside, who has it easier in America today – men or women?

Since Haiti's earthquake earlier this year, thousands of Haitians continue to live in tent cities, which tend to be small, crowded and offer little privacy. As a result, many women have reported being victims of sexual assault or rape. Rape has always been a problem in Haiti, a country where the act was only truly criminalized in 2005, but the breakdown of social structures since the earthquake has worsened the problem.

With the recent announcement that the administration may repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," there has been much talk about issues of equality when it comes to the military. But another another group is also struggling for equal military opportunities: women. The current policy held by the Department of Defense does not allow women in ground units where they might engage in direct combat.

More women serve in America's armed services than in most other nations. Yet 30 percent of female veterans report being sexually assaulted or raped while serving, according to a 2003 survey funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. This month, Congress is hearing testimony from service members who say they were sexually attacked.

The United Nations is reporting that the world is hungrier than ever. This year, the number of people going hungry will top 1 billion for the first time – not a milestone anyone wanted to reach. But a new report claims to have the solution: Give women more power. The BBC's Mark Doyle joins us with the story.

For more, download the International Food Policy Research Institute's Global Hunger Index for 2009 (PDF, 2.7 MB)

Check out the interactive world hunger map from the International Food Policy Research Institute to see how countries are faring:

As we continue our conversation on women serving in war, we turn to a new report, “Women Warriors: Supporting She ‘Who Has Borne the Battle,’” that shows sexual assault in the military was up nine percent last year. But many assaults go unreported, and fewer than 10% of assailants are court-martialed. For a look at the culture of sexual assault in the military, we're joined by the report's author, Erin Mulhall, from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and Army Sgt. Cara Hammer, who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and works in veteran services at the IAVA.

What are the biggest moral challenges we face today? We're joined by two people who have given a lot of thought to cultural challenges around the world, including poverty, racism, and the systematic oppression of women. Nick Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times, and his wife Sheryl WuDunn a former New York Times correspondent.

They are authors of the new book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” and wrote the article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, "The Women's Crusade."

The WNBA (the professional women’s basketball league) just kicked off its new season. The team that won the first WNBA championships, the Houston Comets, folded under financial pressure. The team's that remain are more talent-packed than ever. But they still face a very tough opponent: the economy. The Takeaway is joined by ESPN.com writer Mechelle Voepel to talk about the WBNA's future.

Watch the top 10 WNBA plays in the video below.

Dr. Roshanak Wardak has a lot of ideas for repairing Afghanistan. She was a practicing physician for thirty years, then traded her stethoscope for a role as a member of Afghanistan's parliament. As one of 68 women in the lower house, she works for women's rights and to rebuild the beleaguered nation's infrastructure, especially schools and hospitals. She just testified before the U.S. Congress about her vision for her country and her work with RethinkAfghanistan.org.

Here is Dr. Wardak and others involved in RethinkAfghanistan

Just two weeks after President Obama called for "fair-minded words" to be used in the debate over abortion rights, Dr. George Tiller was gunned down at his church. The accused killer is Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old Kansas resident with a long history of anti-government and anti-abortion actions who was involved with the leaders of the anti-choice movement. It's been ten years since a doctor was killed for performing the procedure, and Dr. Tiller's death is sending shock waves through the tight-knit community. How will doctors act now — and what affect will the killing have on women seeking abortions? To hear reactions from the frontlines, The Takeaway talks to "Jeffrey," a clinic manager in Kansas City, Kansas and to Dr. Bill Harrison, an OB/Gyn in Fayatteville, Arkansas.

The poem Dr. Bill Harrison reads is called "Where are you?," and is by Dr. B. J. Issacson. Read it here:

Where are you?
For over 16 years we have provided
you with choices
Painful choices
I remember—
I sometimes cried with you.
Choices, nevertheless, when you were desperate.

Remember how we protected you privacy
and treated you with dignity and respect
when you
were famous
had been brought to us in shackles
with an armed guard, or
were terrified
that you would run into
one of your students?
I remember each of you.

Continue reading...

Last week, hundreds of women marched in the streets of Afghanistan to condemn a new law that critics say legalizes marital rape. Outrage from both Afghan women and the international community over the passing of this law has been well-documented and President Karzai is reconsidering signing the law. But what does this indicate about the push to democratize Afghanistan? Are we seeing growing signs that some Afghan women have finally had enough of restrictive laws? The Takeaway talks to Gretchen Peters, former Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent for ABC news and author of the forthcoming book, Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Our partners at the New York Times have footage of the protests in Kabul:

In the last five years, Liberia has made the transition from Charles Taylor, a warlord accused of hate crimes, to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman democratically elected to lead an African nation. It's a change that has made Liberia a focal point for the advancement of women in Africa and worldwide. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is now coming to the U.S, and releasing a book about her life, This Child Will Be Great. She's also just been interviewed by Lynn Sherr, special correspondent for World Focus on PBS.


For more, head to worldfocus.org

Here is a 2007 tribute to President Sirleaf created when she was honored at the Africare Bishop Walker Dinner and received the 2007 Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Award.

Women are prohibited from doing many things in Saudi Arabia, among them driving and being alone with a man they are not related to. How do women there decide what freedoms are worth fighting for? Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women's College in Jeddah joins The Takeaway with the story of an unusual campaign she is leading to defend the right of women to buy their lingerie from other women, because currently only men can sell women's underwear. Ms. Asaad joins us now from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.