A Look at Issues Facing Women on the Other 364 Days of the Year

In honor of International Women's Day, we're taking a look back at some of our documentaries on women across the globe and the myriad of issues they face. We wanted to highlight the multifaceted experiences of being a woman–not just on the one day in March when we're told to shout it from the rooftops and get that desperate gasp for equality out of our systems–but every single day of the year. Here are a few selected documentaries on issues affecting women today and every day, including: The devastatingly unequal access to reproductive health care, the maternity leave crisis impacting mothers and families in America, the role of beauty pageants in women's prisons amid the rapid expansion of the prison industrial complex in Brazil, and the rise and fall of matriarchal societies in Eastern Africa and rural China.

The medical abortion–a non-surgical procedure that induces a miscarriage through a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs–is both widely legal and increasingly hard to obtain. To understand the limits of what could be a breakthrough in making abortions easier to access, Broadly hears from both sides of the debate. We traveled to the front lines of the battle in Texas, where religious protesters camp outside rapidly closing clinics, as well as to an abortion spa in Washington, DC, where employees are working to de-stigmatize the stupidly controversial procedure. Internationally, we talk to Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, the physician who recently began using drones to deliver the abortion pill to countries where the procedure is illegal, and we visit a pharmacy in Mexico to see how easy it is to access the abortion pill just across the border. What we really want to know is: Why is it so hard to get a medical abortion when so much research has shown that it's a safe, effective way to terminate a pregnancy?

There are only two countries in the world that do not guarantee paid maternity leave: The United States and Papua New Guinea. Despite the fact that the US ranks second in the world for highest GDP, while Papua New Guinea falls at 139th, working women in both countries face the same fears, often having to choose between motherhood and a career. We traveled to the Pacific island and Sweden—where parents can take up to 480 days off—to compare to compare their options for new mothers against our own.

Every year, Miss World, Miss Universe, and Miss Earth are crowned in Brazil, a country known for its beauty pageants. And at the Penitenciaria Feminina da Capital in Sao Paolo—South America's largest all-female maximum security prison—so is Miss Max. Unlike traditional pageants, the contestants competing for the title of Miss Max are currently serving long sentences for crimes like drug trafficking, kidnapping, and even homicide. They are, however, judged using the standard pageant criteria: beauty, poise, and talent—plus their record of good behavior. We traveled to Sao Paolo, Brazil, to talk with the incarcerated contestants about how a beauty competition can help them temporarily escape the monotony of their lives, and what socio-economic forces helped to put them behind bars in the first place.

China's one-child policy led to millions of female infanticides—except in a lush valley known as the "Land Where Women Rule." Located in the foothills of the Himalayas, Lugu Lake is home to China's Mosuo matriarchy. The Mosuo's "walking marriages"—in which women can have as many boyfriends as they want throughout their lifetime—replace traditional monogamy and inheritance passes from mother to daughter. We spent a week in Lugu Lake with three generations of Mosuo women to find out if women truly are in charge and if cultural changes from a younger generation threaten the survival of the traditional matriarchal society.

Where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert, the people of Samburu have maintained a strict patriarchy for over 500 years in northern Kenya. That is, until 25 years ago, when Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for the region's women. Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili, is quite literally a no man's land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. We visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.