One woman, one Women's Day at a time

Sun, 03/09/2008 12:43 AM | Headlines

This last week we commemorated "International Women's Day" (March 8) with the dissemination of the latest, yet somehow startlingly familiar, dire statistics.

More than two millennia since Lysistrata of ancient Greece was said to have led women in a sex strike in order to end a devastating war, the age-old human dilemmas of violence, inequity, poverty and trafficking continue to weigh most heavily on women.

Now, in 2008 -- more than two centuries after Parisian women marched on Versailles for the right to a voice in decision making; a full century since 15,000 women marched in New York for voting rights; and 31 years since the United Nation's official declaration of International Women's Day it seems tragic to have to acknowledge that although women make up half of the world's human population, they lag behind men in representation; access to education; access to income; and even in the acknowledgement of their basic human rights.

Now, why is this? Well, we all know the answers, don't we? That is the way it has been since the beginning of human history. We have always lived in a male dominated world, where patriarchal traditions and misogyny rule. Men are stronger, more powerful. They have all the guns and they call all the shots. Right?

Granted there are a lot of reasons for believing this if you happen to have been born into the female gender and have a questioning mind. Certainly, from the latest statistics on women and current state of the world, nobody could deny that, as Nancy Astor, social critic and first woman in the British House of Commons, said over half a century ago: "No one sex can govern alone. I believe that one of the reasons why civilization has failed so lamentably is that it has had one-sided government. Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have made it so darned unsafe for women."

However, all of this, in turn, begs a question: If women do, indeed, make up half the population of the Earth, shouldn't sheer strength in numbers have resulted in a less lopsided status quo?

So then, what is at the core of the problem? I have often thought that the biggest constraint faced by human beings -- of both genders -- is that we learn by observing. We are automatic mimics and, on top of that, creatures of habit. Very few of us -- female or male -- ever stop to ask "why" something is so, or "what makes" things work the way they do. I wonder when it is that we will learn that if we keep on following the same old rules unquestioningly, we will always end up with the same disastrous results.

As American rights activist Angela Davis has pointed out: "Given ... the patriarchal patterns of the state, it is difficult to envision the state as the holder of solutions to the problem of violence against women."

In my mind, as long as women keep trying to exact change on our own within systems that are historically skewed against us, or waste energy railing against the cruelty of men, without taking a look at how we are complicit in our own marginalization, we will never achieve a position that reflects our equality in numbers in human society.

As human beings with the right to have our voices heard, women need to realize it is a mistake to think it is enough to cope and survive singly or in isolated groups. We need to become aware that every time we yield to a tradition (ranging from coming home from work exhausted to make dinner for hubby while he relaxes on the couch because he has been working hard all day, to allowing ourselves to endure arranged marriages, or to standing silently by while our sons are shipped off to war) that we know to be detrimental to our well being; that of our children; and for society as a whole, we are facilitating the very paradigms that bind us. In doing so, we act as an integral part of the very systems that limit our rights and abuse us as second class citizens.

As individual women we must acknowledge and accept the fact that nobody will change the way we are treated unless we do -- one by one and through joining our voices together. The only true antidote for the despair we feel when reading those awful statistics on women's place in this world is action.

As the contemporary poet Maya Angelou said recently, "Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women."

I am firmly convinced that, as Nancy Astor so aptly said, "It is no use blaming the men -- we have made them what they are -- and now it is up to us to try and make ourselves -- the makers of men -- a little more responsible."

I believe that, as women living in a pivotal time when collective awareness of human rights is burgeoning, each of us must teach those around us to respect who we are regardless of gender, and that we must do this one woman at a time -- joining hands and weaving interlocking circles of support and courage -- in order to achieve a world in which we do not worry for our daughters or fear the actions of our sons. As mothers, wives, workers and human beings, we -- the women of this world -- are strategically situated to teach coming generations a different, more equitable, less unjust way of being; one woman at a time, one day at a time, one women's day at a time. -- Margaret Agusta

Comments (0) | Post comment

A | A | A |