"If I had only known that when I was young," or "if they had only told me" are just some of the statements made by many women who seek assistance at the centre for victims of gender violence set up by the local government in a town on the outskirts of the Argentine capital. The survey on gender violence among adolescents noted that one out of four women in Argentina has been the victim of some kind of violence, and that in 2010, at least 260 "femicides" – murders in a context of gender violence – were committed in this country of 40 million people, almost all of them by the victims' current or former partners.

Tonga’s Women’s and Children’s Crisis Centre, says politicians lining up for next month’s election need to change their views on the status of women.

At a recent forum, many candidates claimed there’s no need for Tonga to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, or to make changes to allow women to own land.

America's women, who typically are more likely to vote Democratic, have emerged as a key swing voting bloc that could sway this fall's midterm congressional elections. And an Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that those women most apt to turn out in November are shifting away from the Democrats.

Women are profoundly underrepresented in peace negotiations around the globe. In 2009, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reviewed 21 major peace processes held since 1992 and found that women constituted less than 8percent of delegates to talks and less than 3 percent of agreement signatories.

This is a shameful record given that the United Nations specifically called on the world, through a Security Council resolution, to promote the role of women in peacemaking a decade ago.