I attended a movie last night that was sponsored by a local rape counseling service in Asheville.
Since that time, I seem to be bombarded with reminders of how we women just don't get the respect and honor I think we deserve. Most women in the world are at the mercy of men.
From the time they are conceived in the womb they become less treasured than the male. In a number of countries, including China which has a one-child per couple policy, females are either aborted or abandoned more often than their male counterparts.
Once born, a female often becomes a second-rate member in the household, along with her mother. The valued son gets preference, the most food and more respect. The daughter, no matter what her position in the birth order, becomes like a hired girl, to help her mother cook, clean, mend and care for the other children in the family. Sons are too special to even get their fingers dirty, it seems, unless they belong to farmers or car mechanics.
Of the illiterate persons around the world, nearly two-thirds are women, and things aren't getting any better. Of children who are not receiving any formal education, two-thirds are young girls.
Eventually our young girl child develops into a beautiful young woman who attracts young (and in many cases old) men in the community. She is not desirable only for her charm and good looks, but also because of her dowry. Without one, she may be doomed to live with her parents the rest of her life.
In instances in India, many brides have been burned by her husband's family when her parents refuse to pay increased amounts as part of her dowry. In other words, the young woman is a possession, first of her father and then of her husband's family. But instead of the new man in her life buying her, he requires her family to pay to have him take their daughter into his home.
Let's say the dowry gets worked out, and our young woman is allowed to live and start a new life in her husband's household as his possession. She dare not refuse him sex any time he wants it, and she will probably work circles around her husband the rest of her life, while also bearing children for him and raising them to adulthood.
So basically, since a vast number of woman are not allowed to be educated, are not taught equality with men in the home, and often can only see poverty and loneliness if they were to remain single, their only option is to hope for a merciful husband.
But even if a woman does find a husband (usually picked out for her by her family), her life is far from secured. In some countries, such as the Congo now and Bosnia before that, women become a pawn in war and crime. When you want to create fear, to fracture families and communities, you go after the women.
In the movie I recently saw, women in the Congo weren't only raped by a man who thought she was made to service him, more frequently they were violently raped by up to 20 men, often in front of her children. Finishing the job, many had guns and sticks shoved into their vaginas, rupturing bladders, uteruses, rectums, so if they survive, they may never bear children and they will be incontinent the rest of their lives. They are condemned to be ditched aside by husbands and to beg for assistance with pee running down their legs the rest of their lives.
The message of this movie was to tell us that we people who use electronic devices are responsible for this conflict and violence. My laptop and cell phone uses precious metals necessary for computers and phones. These materials are mined by young men in crude ways for shipment to the industrial countries. And how the military and crime lords get what they want is through these random rapes of women throughout the country.
This may well be true. And I would like to help them out to break up the organized crime that is perpetuating this system. But I don't think even this gets to the heart of the problem. The main reason, buried beneath national conflicts and war, is the general de-valuation of half of the human population, its women.
The movie showed a man at the end of the movie sitting outside his hut. He was very critical about what was happening in his country, but while he talked leisurely, his wife was in the backgound washing clothes, cooking, caring for the children. She was at his beck and call. He loved his family, but in my opinion, she was doing all of the backbreaking work while he sang his favorite song.
In another scene, we heard about a woman who was raped, but was "lucky enough" to find a husband who would accept her. She had given him at least three children in four years. He's old enough to be her father. The interviewer asks her if she is now happy. She shakes her head negatively. They ask why not. She quietly answers, "My husband."
I read this to mean that the rape is continuing, except now it is legal because her husband is doing it.
In other shots, we see women carrying loads of wood bent down like cattle. We see them constantly working in the fields, washing clothes, cleaning their huts and feeding their children, unless they're laying on hospital beds recovering from surgery because of their rapes.
We in America could say that things are better here. And I guess they are. But things aren't perfect. I too grew up feeling like a second class citizen. As a wife in my marriage, I also felt secondary to my husband. I felt that I must be submissive for family unity.
And even in this country, rape happens once every six minutes, and some sources estimate that it's more like one rape per every two minutes. Either way, women continue to be at-risk.
Looking at statistics, this is what former President Bill Clinton shared this information recently:
According to the United Nations, women do 66 percent, two thirds of the world's work, produce 50 percent of the world's food — a factor which would stun people in this country given the way agriculture is organized — earn 10 percent of the world's income and own one percent of the world's property.
Don't you think it's about time that we women stand up and say "We're as mad as hell, and we aren't going to take it anymore?"