The French legislature is attempting to combat the age-old corporate “boy’s club” mentality by considering a law that would mandate that corporate boards be composed of at least 40% female members. The law has already passed in the lower house of parliament and is currently being debated in the Senate. Corporate boards across the Western world are still extremely imbalanced in their gender makeup. Currently, women in France only hold 9.5% of corporate board positions. In the United States, boards are comprised of 12.2% women, and in the UK, 8.5%.

In Namibia, women who are diagnosed as HIV-positive are sometimes advised by doctors to undergo a sterilization procedure. Often the women do not understand what the procedure entails, in part due to the language barrier resulting from the 11 indigenous languages spoken around the country. Three HIV-positive women are now suing the state after having allegedly been sterilized without their informed consent.

An interesting editorial at Christian Science Monitor looks at the implications of Iran’s election fraud allegations on women. Although female candidates were prohibited from running, women in Iran are visibly speaking out and protesting the results of the election in which incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the “landslide winner.”