Yes and no…
I have been reading and thinking about the Hejab lately. Here’s a blog post on the topic I thought was fascinating.
This whole notion that women wear the Hejab by “choice” is so perplexing to me.
How can wearing the Hejab be a choice if it’s the only option? For something to be a true choice, don’t you have to be as free to say “No” as you are to say “Yes”?
Or am I missing something huge?
30 years ago in Iran…
Take home:
“Several hundred men eventually attacked the protesters. Several of the women who stood their ground with considerable courage were stabbed as they chanted slogans for equal rights.”
There are really only two reactions to this that I can imagine: 1) sheer hopelessness or 2)doubling down on the fight for fairness.
What’s it gonna be?
Question of the day: How do we in the West pay constructive attention to the plight of girls in cultures so different from our own?
Remember the story of Nujood Ali, the ten year-old Yemeni child bride who, against the most serious of odds, got herself a divorce?
She thought the divorce would be the end of her struggles. She was wrong…
Her story has significant parallels with Dexter Filkins piece in the New York Times about his frustrated efforts to help Shamsia Husseini, one of the Afghan girls who was wounded in an acid attack while she was on her way to school.
Take home:
“There is no change at all since going on television. I hoped there was someone to help us, but we didn’t find anyone to help us. It hasn’t changed a thing. They said they were going to help me and no one has helped me. I wish I had never spoken to the media,” Nujood says bitterly.”
***
“And so it had come to this. The Taliban, or someone who thought like them, had thrown acid in the faces of a number of girls, and a number of readers in the United States and other countries, filled with generosity, had given their money to take care of one of those girls and the school. And now the girl’s family, for reasons I could barely comprehend, was telling me, in effect, that they wanted something else.”
The challenge, of course, is that what stirs our interest of the West are stories – stories about individuals, stories with pictures. And yet, that kind of interest, well-intentioned as it is, generates a temporary spike in monetary donations which often doesn’t translate into a better life even for the individual for whom it is intended – much less for all the girls like her.
So what’s the solution? How do we in the West channel our attention in truly effective ways?
To me, what is needed is a vehicle for sustained attention and a committed group of individuals willing to wrestle with the challenge of how best to foster change from far away.
You read the New York Times Sunday magazine, right? Now try this on for size..
Far better criticism than mine, I have to admit…
Take home:
“This distrust is further aggravated by the Western journalist’s reluctance to seek the expertise of local people. A common complaint of people of the developing world is that they only appear in Western stories as subjects — either as poor, hopeless victims, or as savage creatures in need of the West’s moral intervention. They are never considered vital ingredients in the problem-solving recipe.”
Call me a sap, but somehow this give me hope…
We’ve allgotta eat,right?
Take home:
“This shows how artists and bearers of noble causes transcend politics.”
Good news
After yesterday’s bad news on the domestic violence front, some good news.
Take home:
“Yes, I believe that the public protest, with women voices loud and clear was instrumental in ensuring that justice is done,” The Uganda Association of Women Lawyers’s (FIDA) Chief Executive Officer, Maria Nassali, told IPS.”
A Happy Anniversary
Today is the 89th anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
A little enlightened self-interest never hurt anybody…
Malcolm Potts in the LA Times on one of the ways empowering girls and women will lead to a safer world…
Take home:
“This feudal, fundamentalist, warrior society will never join the 21st century — or even the 16th century — unless we win the war to liberate women. Unless women are given the freedom to choose whether or when to have a child, by 2050 there will be millions more angry men age 15 to 25 in Afghanistan. If only a tiny percentage are potential insurgents or suicide bombers, no Western army, however large and however strongly backed at home, has the slightest chance of prevailing.”
Another way of living…
I hope you have had a chance to see today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine. The entire issue is devoted to making the case (hurrah!) for the importance of women’s rights.
There are lots of great articles to read, including a wonderful follow-up piece on the Afghan girls who had acid sprayed in their faces as they walked to school.
There is also a fascinating piece on gender preference called The Daughter Deficit.
Interestingly, the print cover of the magazine looks like this:
Gorgeous, right? In case you can’t read the headline, it is “Why Women’s Rights Are the Cause of our Time.”
But the online version of the magazine carries this headline:
To which I say, “Bah!”
Women do not need to be saved.
Our planet needs to be saved.
Did you ever see the movie, Koyaanisqatsi? The title comes from a Hopi word which means, “crazy life, life in turmoil, life disintegrating, life out of balance or a state of life that calls for another way of living.”
We all pretty much agree, do we not, that our planet cannot sustain this way we have been living?
Women do not need to be saved.
Our species needs to be saved.
The imbalance of power between men and women is completely unnatural artifact of humankind. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the natural world. Across species, males and females have different approaches to carrying out their evolutionary imperative to pass along their genes. But in no other species is the balance of power, the balance of influence, the balance of yin and yang, so completely and utterly out of whack.
No wonder we’re in such a profound mess.
The imbalance of power, rights and opportunity between boys and girls is at the deep heart of the larger imbalances on our planet.
It is time for another way of living.
Girls need to be educated, empowered and given their fair share of opportunity.
They can take it from there…
If you want to help create another way of living, please visit 5 for Fairness.
