🌏 The Women's World Cup Kicks Off, India Demands Justice For Women Paraded Naked And More

Hello and welcome to the Almost newsletter, a weekly email to help you stay updated and make sense of important stories happening around the world including:

• 🌏 This Week’s Top Stories
• 👩 Women To Know
• 🙌 Good News For Your Week

A viral video showing men in India forcibly parading two women naked before allegedly gang raping them has sparked outrage across the country.

The short video clip, which started to go viral on July 19, shows a group of men leading two naked women, aged 21 and 42, to an empty field.

The incident had actually happened on May 4th in Manipur, northeast India, where ethnic riots erupted between the Hindu Meitei and Christian Kuki-Zo tribes.

Both women were allegedly raped after  eing forcibly paraded naked, according a group of Indigenous leaders.

However, the 21-year-old woman told police that only one of them was gang raped, and a third woman was forced to strip naked, although she is not seen in the video.

Police arrested at least four men on Thursday July 20.

Manipur’s chief minister said that a thorough investigation is underway and authorities will ensure “strict action is taken against all the perpetrators.

“I assure the nation, the law will take its course with all its might. What happened with the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven,” prime minister Narendra Modi said.

However, victims and activists have said the government and police have been too slow to respond.

India is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.

According to government data from 2020, a woman is raped every 15 minutes in the country, Al Jazeera reported.

Also Happening Around The World

🇹🇭 The progressive Thai opposition leader who won the elections has been suspended and blocked from being prime minister once again.

🇬🇷 Greece is sweltering under its longest heatwave on record as wildfires blaze through the country.

🇷🇺 Russia passed a bill that bans people from changing their gender.

🇮🇷 Iran has re-introduced the “morality police” after they were mostly suspended after the death of Mahsa Amini.

🇰🇭 After ruling for 38 years, Cambodia’s authoritarian leader is stepping down and handing power to his son.

As the 2023 Women’s World Cup kicks off in Australia and New Zealand, a French advertisement promoting the country’s women’s national soccer team has gone viral for its genius way of addressing unconscious gender bias in the sport.

The commercial aired in late June as part of a campaign by telecom company Orange to promote its sponsorship of the French women’s team in this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup.

“We made the observation that women’s soccer is underestimated, less followed and even mocked while the skills of the players are very impressive and matches can bring as much emotion as those of men,” an Orange spokesperson told CNN. “We wanted to rectify the truth and shift these received ideas.”

Women’s soccer has a notoriously been overlooked and undervalued, with the achievements of many women soccer stars often overshadowed or completely left out compared to their male counterparts.

For example, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, often hailed as the top scorer in international soccer at 123 goals, is actually only the 8th highest scorer when both men and women players are taken into consideration.

The top honor actually belongs to Canada’s Christine Sinclair at 190 goals.

Many World Cup feats and records set by the men’s players have actually already been achieved or surpassed by one or more women’s team players.

Though some progress has been made to boost interest and address the inferior treatment and lower salary in women’s soccer, the soccer fandom is still heavily male-dominated.

The total prize money for the FIFA women’s tournament was raised to US$150 million this year, but it is still only a third of the US$440 million that was given to the men’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.

During the 73rd FIFA Congress in March, FIFA President Gianni Infantino acknowledged the pay gap was an issue, saying it hoped to reach equal pay for men and for women by 2026 and 2027.

More Women’s World Cup Stories

🇪🇸🇳🇱 Spain and the Netherlands’ women’s soccer teams mocked New Zealand’s Indigenous haka dance, sparking anger.

🇲🇦 Morocco’s women’s soccer captain was asked about her teammates’ sexuality and people are pissed.

🇰🇷 This South Korean soccer player scored an outrageous goal and then got shy and it’s so cute.

Women in Afghanistan bravely held a rare protest against the Taliban banning beauty salons.

On July 4, the Taliban ordered all beauty salons to close in a month because some treatments were “un-Islamic”.

Women in Afghanistan were already banned from classrooms, gyms and parks, and salons had been one of the last public places that women could socialize.

The decision to close beauty salons will also lead to the loss of around 60,000 jobs, the BBC reported.

On Wednesday July 19, about 50 women took to the streets of Kabul to protest against the ban.

The women held up signs reading “Work, food, freedom”, but they were met with water canons and tasers from Taliban guards, who also shot their guns into the air.

Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban has increasingly restricted women’s rights, including banning girls from going to high school and university.

In a rare move in Japan, J-pop star Shinjiro Atae has publicly come out as gay in the conservative country.

33-year-old Atae is best known as a member of the J-pop group AAA before he became a solo artist.

Speaking at a fan event in Tokyo on Wednesday July 26, Atae gave an emotional speech revealing that he is gay.

He said that he had long struggled to accept that part of himself as he was afraid of being shunned from society or losing his career.

But Atae said he decided to come out because he didn’t want people to struggle like him.

This makes Atae one of the biggest pop stars to publicly come out in the conservative country.

Japan is the only G7 country that still doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage.

More Good News For Your Week

🇬🇭 Ghana is abolishing the death penalty for almost all crimes, becoming the 29th African country to do so.

🇯🇵 As his heartwarming proposal from 2008 goes viral again, we spoke to Yasushi “Yassan” Takahashi about his epic six month journey to trace out the words “MARRY ME” across Japan.

Thanks so much for opening this email. If you think a friend would like this, you can forward it to them! You can also follow Almost on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. We also have a Chinese version.

Let us know your thoughts about this week’s news in the comments or by replying directly to this email ✨