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It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali.
It is today's New York Times column by Nichoals Kristof about a young girl from Yemen, and the next paragraph is key, both for Kristof and for me:
Nujood is a Yemeni girl, and it’s no coincidence that Yemen abounds both in child brides and in terrorists (and now, thanks to Nujood, children who have been divorced). Societies that repress women tend to be prone to violence.
I want to explore two issues. The first is the connection between repression of women and violence, on which Kristof focuses. The second is when if at all it is appropriate to intervene in the customs of another society. And I will start with the second.
There seems to be a conflict in attitudes towards other societies. On the one hand, if their is a belief in the superiority of one's own culture, one may feel a responsibility to impose it on others that are different. This may be justified in many ways, up to and including what one encounters in the justification of religious imposition - that by so doing you are saving their souls. Historically we have seen many instances of this, and perhaps remember from our studies of the Age of Exploration how important a role Christian missionary work played - it is perhaps appropriate to remember this on the birthday of one of the most important figures of that age, Prince Henry the Navigator, born this date in 1394.
We should remember that such an impulse has also been a part of American history, with examples such as requiring Native Americans to abandon their ways and especially their religion, beating them for speaking Native tongues. On a larger scale we might remember William McKinley saying we were going to civilize and Christianize the Philippines, even as Christianity had had a presence there as long as the period of European settlement in North America. As a civilization we are especially arrogant, something seen in the persistence of American Exceptionalism, although to be fair we pale in comparison to some other cultures and regimes: our history of slavery and repression and slaughter of those on the Continent before our European ancestors may seem to pale in comparison of the atrocities of the Third Reich towards those it viewed as Untermenschen or worse, and today we can see the ongoing repression of minority cultures under the control of the Han Chinese People's Republic.
There is a flip side. We may sometimes feel that we are so superior that we should not concern ourselves we the goings on within "less" or "un-" civilized nations, even when the treatment of some in those nations/societies shocks our consciences. Those of a certain age can remember another approach, a direct order not to intervene, as exemplified by the Prime Directive so much a part of many episodes of Star Trek, that there be no interference in the social development of planets encountered on the voyages of the Enterprise.
I am of the opinion that there are times when direct intervention is not only allowable, but also necessary because of the implications of the actions within another society. I believe one measure of when conditions arise to the level of such actions is either when what occurs is shocking to the point of crimes against humanity or when the consequences of such action have a serious impact on the safety and stability of our own society/nation and/or those with whom we maintain close and friendly relations.
Let me return to Kristof. You can read the column - which I strongly encourage you to do - so there is no need for me to repeat the story of the young lady. Focusing on her is, for both Kristof and myself, a way at addressing a larger issue. Consider these factors, offered by Kristof as reasons countries marginalizing women are often unstable:
- They often have exceedingly high birth rates. After all, the younger women marry the longer their childbearing years. This tends to create a larger population of males 15-24.
- That increase of the younger male population historically is associated with social conflict. In our own country we know a bulge in that demographic group correlates heavily with increases in crime of many kinds.
- Such countries often practice polygamy. That reduces the women available to some men, and the early marriage often means an earlier death rate - perhaps in child birth - further distorting the ratio of women to men. As Kristof notes,
That means fewer marriageable women — and more frustrated bachelors to be recruited by extremists.
Kristof makes a comparison between Pakistan and Bangladesh, informing us that after the independence of the latter, Bangladesh began a deliberate policy of educating females not seen in Pakistan.
The educated women staffed an emerging garment industry and civil society, and those educated women are one reason Bangladesh is today far more stable than Pakistan.
I would add to this something else: Grameen Bank was founded in Bangladesh, and it has also served as a mean of empowering women through micro-credit. As those women have become more economically independent they have been better able to provide stability for their families and their communities. Bangladesh may by US standards be a poor nation, yet it is also a nation more stable in many ways than places like Pakistan.
Similarly, we might remember that there were multiple reasons for the lack of violence in Saddam's Iraq. To be sure, there was political repression and a monopoly of violence on the part of the regime. There was also serious effort to educate women and fully include them in the operation of the economy and the government. Where women are empowered, there is less violence against them, and usually less violence in the society as a whole.
Kristof calls Yemen "a time bomb" and writes
It is a hothouse for Al Qaeda and also faces an on-and-off war in the north and a secessionist movement in the south. It’s no coincidence that Yemen is also ranked dead last in the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index.
He concludes with this short paragraph:
The United States last month announced $150 million in military assistance for Yemen to fight extremists. In contrast, it costs just $50 to send a girl to public school for a year — and little girls like Nujood may prove more effective than missiles at defeating terrorists.
Intervening in other societies. Some say efforts to educate young girls in societies where that has not been allowed is improper interference, or if you will, a violation of our own sense of the Prime Directive. And yet, we also honor those like Greg Mortenson who do precisely that, because we see the difference an education can make. Kristof talked about birth rates. Educated women are far better able to assert control over their own fertility, thereby decreasing the demographic pressures that flow from rapidly expanding population. Countries that do not control their birth rate run the risk of instability because they lack the resources for the expanding population, many cannot find employment as they mature. For the young men that can increase the appeal of militarism and terrorism. Either can lead to instability in the region, which provides some justification for some kind of intervention - it affects us all.
For me that is insufficient. I accept all that Kristof has to offer in this and similar columns, such as when he writes about the women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For me it is something more basic, perhaps a product of being the descendant of Eastern European Jews many of whose cousins died in the 1940s. It is also the product of having grown up during - and participated in, in however minor a fashion - the civil rights era.
I believe in the importance of speaking out for those who cannot speak for themselves. Not every young girl in such a situation can demonstrate the audacity of Nujood Ali. Human beings should never be treated as property, as disposable, as existing merely for the pleasure or benefit - economic, military or sexual - of other human beings. IF they are at the receiving end of abusive power which they lack the means to counter, I believe we have a responsibility to offer assistance to help them, to offset that abusiveness. It is one reason I strongly believe in labor unions - even for teachers, or should I say especially for teachers, although that is a topic for another time.
Divorced Before Puberty - an attention getting title. Perhaps it may seem deceptive. I think not. If you are divorced before puberty, that means you were married before puberty. Certainly that should lead to some minimal curiosity as to why? And if one follows the line of inquiry, the implications are - at least to me - of grave concern.
If we allow any society to repress or brutalize - the less powerful, the poor, the minorities, those not part of the inner groups/ethnicity/religion/gender/sexual orientation - the repression will not stop there. That alone justifies our concern and even our intervention.
Even more basic - there are and there should be things simply unacceptable. To argue that it is part of a society or that we should not violate national sovereignty is to rationalize slavery such as that which stains our own history or the extermination of minority groups within a nation. We already know where the latter leads: most of those killed in the Holocaust were not within the boundaries of Germany when Hitler came to power.
And even more basic than that - what we tolerate being done to others we implicitly accept being done to us, for we are fellow humans, and we cannot pretend that we are so different. At least, we should not.
Divorced Before Puberty - those three words should grab our attention. We may have many things about which we need to be concerned, but the human heart and conscience are not limited, and we should follow both.
Peace.