5 for Fairness

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.