Today is International Women’s Day, and women around the world are celebrating their progress so far and the successes they have achieved. Most of us come from families and communities where women have achieved their rights, and we should really be truly grateful for that. We are educated, we can have careers, we can travel, have our own friends and hobbies, and most importantly we are an important part of the decision making in our families.
However, there are millions of women who are suppressed by a male-dominant culture and customs, especially in poorer regions of the world such as in Asia, Africa and South America. The issues women face range far and wide: child marriage, FGM, lack of education, widow abuse, and so on. But at the root of all these is poverty and lack of education, which go hand in hand.
As an adviser to WISE (www.wisemuslimwomen.org) and co-chapter leader of Together Women Rise (www.togetherwomenrise.org- formerly Dining for Women), I meet every month with our chapter and we talk about our grantees, which receive grants ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 for projects such as keeping girls in schools, whether it is in Swat, Pakistan or Peru. As we watch these videos we are awestruck by these women and girls and their courage and grit in facing such blatant and direct discrimination. Poverty erases any protections that a faith, such Islamic laws protecting women’s rights, or civic laws proclaim. The reality on the ground forces parents to make seemingly cruel decisions, such as child marriage. And wars create refugees, which make women and girls exploitation even easier. I watched with horror a documentary “Human Flow” on Amazon Prime; one Afghani refugee shared how his family’s girls and women were taken into the woods and raped by smugglers who were trying to get them to Europe. As they are under the radar, there is no recourse for them but to cry and bemoan their fate.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that we live in a world where war machines get billions of dollars to destroy families and communities and create a human flow across the planet, and small groups try to help those helpless men, women and children with a “fistful of dollars”, a few crumbs compared to the armed forces budget around the planet, and especially in our country (which has twice as much budget as all the world’s arms budget combined). We can only change what’s in our control. So, continue to help and develop women and girls in whatever way you can, for in it there is a promise of peace, solidarity and safety for all. I pray that women dismantle the military machines that have destroyed so much once and for all.
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