The Worst Place on Earth to be a Woman: Violence against Yemeni Women in Peace and War

despite excessively high levels of violence and male control, Yemeni women have displayed remarkable resilience and a determination to challenge some of the unjust laws and norms that shape their society. They do this on the basis that such conventions do not derive from Islam but, rather, from imperfect interpretations, whether deliberate or not, by men. Yemeni women?s confidence comes both from outrage and humiliation and also a history of activism. In order to encourage political empowerment for women in Yemen, there need to be cultural changes and institutional changes. However, the deterioration in their status since the start of the war in 2014 and the escalating levels of violence against them illustrates in bleak terms how quickly progress can be reversed. The rise in male violence against women raises troubling questions about unbalanced gender relations and the propensity, during periods of instability, to punish women and exclude them from the national narrative.