On Everywoman we are uncompromising in our approach and dig deeper to uncover the stories that women want told.

 

Everywoman is the first show of its kind out of this region and is essential viewing to half the world’s population and you men won’t want to miss it either.

Type 2 Diabetes

In New York, diabetes is an epidemic - according to health officials, more than one in eight adults has the progressive and often fatal disease.

Typically the word epidemic is used for outbreaks of infectious diseases but now it’s being used to describe the rapid rise in new cases of diabetes being diagnosed in the US and worldwide.

Researchers are predicting that Type 2 Diabetes is becoming so widespread that one in three girls born in the US today will go on to develop the life-threatening condition.

Our report comes from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York where doctors see on a daily basis how badly Type 2 Diabetes affects lives.

Shahnaz Pakravan discussed the issue further with studio guest Dr Mona Nasrallah, an endocrinologist from Beruit, who thinks the problem is on the increase in the Middle East and that people must change their lifestyle before it’s too late.

Boxing Sisters

The Arab Israeli sisters Riham and Fatma Agabaria have been pushing sporting boundaries all their lives.

 

They are both boxers and although experts say there’s nothing in Islam that prevents women taking up the sport one local religious leader issued a decree against the duo saying it was against their religion to be fighting especially fighting members of the opposite sex.

Fay Weldon

British author Fay Weldon’s has been regarded as the vanguard of British Feminism.

 

As author of The Fat Woman’s Joke, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and Wicked Women she encouraged women to delve into their darker side, to seek revenge and break taboos.

Her work has constantly challenged women’s roles and relationships, but her latest book What Makes Women Happy has created quite a stir as it seems to contradict what she has advised women previously.  

 

Shahnaz finds out what does make women happy.

Also this week an Everywoman special - The Women of Hezbollah:

 

Everywoman travels to Aita Al Chaab in Southern Lebanon, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting during the Israeli Lebanese war.

 

Everywoman meets an ordinary woman about why she chose to stay in the town and risked her life sheltering some of the Hezbollah fighters.

 

We visit to Beirut to visit the women’s Islamic Resistance Support Association; where volunteer members contribute to the cause by making handicrafts that are sold at trade shows and fairs to fund the resistance.

They also run sponsorship programmes whereby women can pay to outfit a fighter from his helmet to his boots and even provide him with bullets.

Whilst there the Everywoman team was invited to the annual Hezbollah’s Iftar – an affair attended by close to seven thousand women.

 

In 1996 Zeinab lost her husband in the Hezbollah Israeli conflict in Southern Lebanon; her daughter Amal lost a father.

Ten years later in August 2006 history repeated itself when Amal lost her husband of two years.

Now he is celebrated by Hezbollah as a “martyr” and Amal has very mixed emotions on what happened.

While her mother Zeinab has embraced the Hezbollah ideology and wishes that her sons will someday follow their father, Amal ultimately desires peace.

She tells of her pride in what she perceives as his heroism but her strong sense of loss is expressed in a heartfelt wish for the violence to end for her daughter’s sake.

 

Everywoman spends a day with Al Manar’s English speaking presenter Zeinab Al-Saffar, who gives us an insider look into the controversial channel that has been called by some “terror television” and banned in various countries around the world.

 

Zeinab tells us what drives her to be the female face of Al Manar, she also takes us to the university she lectures at part time and travels with us to Beirut’s hard hit Dahiyeh neighborhood, where her house once stood.