Police in South Africa have confirmed the discovery of a ninth woman's body in just two months.

Concerns are growing over a string of unexplained deaths east of Johannesburg.

Several of the women were found partially clothed and with injuries, but police have stressed that they have not established whether all the deaths are connected or whether a serial killer is responsible.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith joins Syria’s Kurdish women fighters training in northeast Syria as they push to join the country’s new army. Around 1,500 are seeking integration, but commanders say they’re being told Syrian society ‘isn’t ready’ for women in the military.

Gen Z researcher Rachel Janfaza says that young women have bonded politically in response to major social and cultural events of the past decade. Gen Z men, she says, don’t have similar spaces.

Each year, around two million women are released from prisons and jails in the US, many with nowhere to go. Susan Burton knows this firsthand: after cycling in and out of prison for years, she finally found a safe place to land ... and made it her mission to offer others the same. She shares how she's helping thousands rebuild their lives — and changing the way we think about second chances. 

Female staff at the Eiffel Tower were told to leave their workstations to be replaced by male colleagues while a religious Hindu group visited.

Two Muslim female journalists allege they were detained and brutally assaulted by police in India’s capital, Delhi. Police have denied the allegations, claiming the journalists were brought to the station over an illegal parking dispute.

IOL has launched a specialised Gender-Based Violence Desk to deliver sustained, in-depth reporting and greater accountability around South Africa’s GBV crisis.

A pioneering British sportswoman who broke her neck in a car crash when she was 16 says that after the accident, she decided to make the most of what she'd got. Nathalie McGloin became the world's first and only female tetraplegic racing driver, racing against both able-bodied men and women. Her story is proof that both gender and disability are completely irrelevant when it comes to racing cars. She spoke to us about her life and her charity Spinal Track. 

India's informal workers often lose income when extreme heat makes it impossible to work. A new insurance scheme is offering automatic payouts when temperatures cross dangerous thresholds. Can it help millions adapt to a hotter world?

Five years after the Taliban returned to power, Afghan women and girls continue to face severe restrictions on education, work and public life. Maryam, who can no longer attend school openly, now studies online and teaches English to other girls in secret. Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan Researcher at Human Rights Watch, discusses the risks, limitations and long-term consequences of denying education to millions of Afghan girls.

The BBC has been given a rare glimpse at how the Taliban is running Afghanistan, five years after it swept aside a US-backed government in the country to return to power.

In that time, women have been excluded from most workplaces, banned from universities and may not travel alone or visit parks and leisure centres.

In encounters spread over two years, the BBC gained unusual access to influential figures in the extreme Islamist movement, spending time with men who once planned suicide attacks or spent years in underground hideouts, but are now officials and soldiers.

Female athletes are pushing back against a sports-betting ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, which is being slammed for sexually objectifying women in sport.

Bangladesh has brought back women-only buses in Dhaka and two other cities. After three failed attempts in four decades, the question remains: can the pink buses finally stay on the road?

The trial of Lindsey Clancy, the mother accused of killing her three children in Massachusetts, has stirred conversation over the treatment of postpartum depression. While Clancy’s case is distinctly rare and involves potential postpartum psychosis, postpartum depression is remarkably common.

A request by a Hindu religious delegation has sparked outrage in France after female employees were reportedly sidelined during an Eiffel Tower visit. What does the controversy reveal about religion, gender and secularism? We asked South Asia expert Christophe Jaffrelot of Sciences Po.

Gloria Steinem, who became a face of the women's liberation movement in the US, has died, aged 92.

In a post on Instagram, her foundation said she "passed away peacefully" at her home in New York City on Wednesday, "surrounded by many who loved her".

Steinem, who was a writer and magazine editor, co-founded the Women's Action Alliance - a group dedicated to fighting sexism - more than 50 years ago.

For decades, many families in India and China did not want daughters. Girls were often aborted, killed as infants, abandoned, or sold. But in recent years, things have started to change.

Political decisions aimed at curbing rapid population growth in India and China, together with a widespread preference for boys for economic reasons, have led to a situation where both countries now have more men than women. Again and again, the preference for sons over daughters caused families to resort to radical measures, ranging from sex-selective abortions to infanticide, the abandonment of girls, and, in China, the sale of girls after birth. As early as 1990, Indian economist Amartya Sen, who would later win the Nobel Prize in Economics, warned that more than 100 million women were "missing" in the developing world, and especially in India and China, in the ratio to men. Today, many men in China and India are unable to find wives due to the shortage of women. That is one of the factors that has led to a shift in thinking in both countries—both in politics and society. Educational initiatives, policy measures and the work of activists are all helping to drive forward the change. We hear from people who are facilitating a comeback of girls and who believe that the birth of a girl is a blessing rather than a burden.

Can football reveal the gender inequity within a country?

French astronaut Sophie Adenot is taking her third spacewalk in two weeks and is leading rare all-female excursion outside ISS. The main mission is to replace a retroreflector, a device that align modules when they arrive towards the space station. Other maintenance operations are planned. The whole excursion is supposed to last between six and six and a half hours. It is only the sixth all-female excursion in space history.

Four years after nationwide protests over compulsory hijab swept Iran, authorities are ramping up efforts to control what women wear. Human rights researchers say the renewed crackdown is part of a broader escalation in repression amid the war.

A mother of 3 was handcuffed and taken to a police station in Cape Town. An hour later, she was dead.

Cebisa Silwana’s death exposes police failures that continue to affect communities once targeted by apartheid.

The most highly-qualified group of women in human history are beginning to take a step back, despite having made extraordinary gains across the rich world. Vinjeru Mkandawire, The Economist’s news editor, explores why this could be.