By Sharanya Gopinathan
Ah, some morning satisfaction for the feminist soul.
Cartooning for Peace is a non-profit international network of 162 editorial cartoonists from 59 countries. They collaborated with UN Women for International Women’s Day and the 62nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62).
As part of that collab, UN Women just released a selection of cartoons around the theme of women empowerment and gender justice, all made by members of Cartooning for Peace. They’re part of a book called Make place for women!, which highlights the challenges women face in accessing education, work, religion and participating in other forms of public life.
Cartoons are a particularly satisfying and intriguing form of activism because of their unique propensity to shock, amuse, and outrage. The addition of humour and comedy to social and political criticism tends to have a specifically enervating and sometimes volatile effect on its public, which is part of what makes these cartoons as delicious as they are.
The cartoons, from as far and wide as Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela, France and Italy, point out skewed gender roles and the division of household labour, the wage gap and the objectification of women in magazines. You can check some of the cartoons out on UN Women’s website here.