The Imperative Of Women’s Human Rights–Reflections On The 100th Anniversary Of International Women’s Day

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Mar 072011
 

This year marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.  It is a time to celebrate the lives of women and to renew our commitment to women’s human rights throughout the world.

That it is even necessary to have such a day should give us pause.  There is not, after all, an International Men’s Day.  But the truth is that while women may be half of the world’s population, they most assuredly are not equal stakeholders when it comes to human rights and empowerment.

An early International Women's Day event

Here in the U.S., women’s reproductive health rights are under sustained siege as never before.  In the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Sudan women are raped with impunity.  In Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of women have gone missing and been brutally murdered and the perpetrators roam freely.  Honor killings continue to be a huge problem in the Middle East and female genital mutilation is still a common practice in many parts of Africa.  In southeast Asia and eastern Europe, women are trafficked into sexual slavery.  In India there are dowry murders.

Million Women Rise March in London

The above isn’t even close to an exhaustive list of human rights violations perpetrated against women, but merely serves to illustrate that misogyny in its many guises is globally systemic.  There are so many people working to stop these atrocities, but yet they continue unabated, year in and year out for the very simple reason that putting a halt to them challenges the patriarchal power structure that controls our world.

It is easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of tackling even one of the problems discussed above.  The idea of addressing them in their entirety seems beyond human power. But indeed, for women to be fully empowered, we must insist that the connections between individual misogynies be made and that the problem be addressed in full.  And yes, that implies profound changes for both men and women, but they are changes for the common good and on this 100th anniversary of IWD, we must find the will to make it so.  Anything less imperils us all.

IWD poster from Russia

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 Posted by Fempeace on March 7, 2011

International Women’s Day 2010: Equal Opportunity Requires A Paradigm Shift

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Mar 072010
 

As part of the observance of International Women’s Day this year, the United Nations, has chosen “Equal rights, equal opportunity: Progress for all.” as its theme.  Sadly, in large measure  achieving these ideals is still very much a work in progress.

While to be sure, there has been much progress in the last few decades, women still hold only a small fraction of elected offices.  Women earn pennies on the dollar earned by their male counterparts while juggling the overwhelming burden of caring work for no pay at all.

In parts of the world, women are raped and murdered when they go to fetch water and firewood for their families.  Schools for girls are fire-bombed and acid is thrown in the faces of girls who have the temerity to want an education.

When women are raped, they are accused of being  adulterers and are stoned to death  or in other ways killed to salvage their family’s honor.  In many countries, young girls are still forced to undergo Female Genital Mutilation.

Abortion is still illegal, unsafe and/or inaccessible for many women and hundreds of thousands of women die unnecessarily from childbirth related reasons.  Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be attacked by fellow soldiers than by any enemy and women, particularly in Southeast Asia, are all too often victimized by sex traffickers and forced into prostitution near military bases or are trafficked into domestic slavery.

There is a word for this and it is misogyny.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where things mostly operate on the notion that power comes from winning battles and controlling resources and people.  Implicitly in such a system, you can not allow those you want to control to become equal.  And in this world, there is a long history of men asserting control over women.

The only way this changes is to redefine empowerment.  Imagine a world in which we lay claim to power that comes from the worthiness of how we conduct our own lives and how we connect with the world around us, rather than insisting that we must control things.  For there to be equality of rights and opportunity, that is the paradigm change we will need to make.  And in doing so, we can begin to become fully empowered and leave the damage of misogyny behind us.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!

The Feminist Peace Network is proud to participate in the Gender Across Borders Blog for IWD.  To read more more fabulous blogs, click here.  For more International Women’s Day coverage on the Feminist Peace Network, click here.

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 Posted by Fempeace on March 7, 2010