Jane Gabriel is Programme Director of openDemocracy's 50.50 editorial project. She directed more than thirty documentaries for Channel Four Television and the BBC international current affairs series "Correspondent" before joining openDemocracy. Jane was a member of Britain's first all women television production company, Broadside.

Jane's contributions to openDemocracy include podcast interviews with Balghis Badri on Women beyond the war in Sudan, the Women and Memory collective, Afaf El-Sayyed,  Yakin Ertürk, John Holmes, Hibaaq Osman, and a package on women's rights in Jordan . She has also produced podcasts on the Pathways of Women's Empowerment research programme. Elswhere, she has contributed blog reportage from the Commission on the Status of Women 2008, the Nobel Women's Initiative conference in June 2007 and the Marie Stopes Global Safe Abortion conference in October 2007, plus the UN Commissionon the Status of Women 2008 and the Commission on the Status of Women 2007 and the annual 16 Days Against Gender Violence.

Recent articles

Legal reform in Egypt establishing Family Courts with mandatory mediation ( see Mulki Al-Sharmani: Egypt's family courts: route to empowerment? )   and the introduction of no fault divorce proceedings known as ‘khola'  is prompting discussion about relations between men and women in marriage, including women's sexual rights. As the government and women's rights organisations talk about further legal reforms, the assumptions of the law makers are increasingly being called into question.

Mulki al Sharmani and Sawsan Sherif  are based at the Social Research Centre of the American University in Cairo and have been monitoring the work of two family courts, looking at how the reforms are working for women on the ground. They spoke to Jane Gabriel in Cairo about some surprising findings of their research.

Listen now.

A new report produced by the Karama network ‘Refugee and Stateless Women across the Arab Region: stories of the dream of return, the fear of trafficking and the discriminatory laws' (pdf) is a ground breaking work written collaboratively by women from Syria, Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Somalia and Morocco. It combines original research and personal testimony with historical and political analysis, to call for a response to refugees that moves beyond relief services to the promotion of rights. The authors address in detail the particular problems faced by Iraqi women living in Syria, Egypt and Jordan, Palestinian women living in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, Sudanese women living in Egypt and Somalian women living in ‘a nation without a state'.

As George Bush leaves Israel and the West Bank and heads for Gulf states talks, Robi Damelin, a member of Parents Circle Families Forum, laments the failure of leaders to understand that the same pain is shared by all.

Robi Damelin writes: Roll up roll up and join the queue to receive your certificate for missed opportunities. Spread the red carpet from Ben Gurion to Har Herzl or Kiriat Shaul and let them pontificate over open graves. Play the National Anthem and let's listen to all the voices of doom and gloom. Fly the flag and stay glued to your identity. (more...)