Ever since I was a little girl, my parents and teachers used to tell me that the secret to happiness and excellence lies in education. Good grades were synonymous with prosperity and wealth, they’d drill into me. Yet no one ever told me about life after school. What’s next? […]

“The average salary in Russia is based on the premise that one person earns RUB 2 million while the other 99 earn RUB 8000 per month. So taken together they earn RUB 27,000 on average. Simply put, Petya has 10 apples and Vasya has no apples. So on the average, […]

42% of Romanian women live in severe poverty. This is the worrying conclusion of a 2013 European Union Report on Gender Equality. I wanted to find out more on how women in my country got there, so I spoke to Prof. Oana Băluță, associate professor at the Faculty of Journalism […]

This article was written in collaboration with my fellow FutureChallenges author Anikó Mészáros who was of great help in finding the interviewees for this piece. As mobility has increased in Europe, women from poor social backgrounds in Central Europe have hit the road to find the work in Western Europe  […]

“I know it’s sinful, but sometimes I feel like committing suicide” are the words of a 66 years old woman I went to interview for this article in Skopje, Macedonia. Mona* suffers from hyperlipidaemia, heart problems, bronchitis and chronic sickness of the uterus. She has no way of paying for […]