This Tuesday, International Women's Day will focus our attention on
the struggle that millions still face against injustice and
discrimination. In an impassioned essay, Mariella Frostrup argues that
the fight for women's rights is far from over
Mariella Frostrup
The Observer, Sunday 6 March 2011
Mariella with Darfuri refugees from camps in Chad. Some women are
raped daily when they venture out to gather firewood to cook.
Photograph: Jason Mccue for the Observer
In the western world the greatest triumph of spin in the last century
is reflected in attitudes to feminism. Our struggle for emancipation
and equality has been surreptitiously rewritten as a harpy bra-burning
contest while elsewhere, in less affluent parts of the world, the
response is altogether different. From Mozambique to Chad, South
Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the
buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of
the future for themselves and their families. At female gatherings all
over sub-Saharan Africa you'll find enthusiasm and eager signatories
to the cause.
Not, they're quick to point out, that they're fans of the strident man
bashing we enthusiastically took part in during feminism's second
wave. Theirs is a quiet, dignified and entirely implacable
determination to make equality not just an aspiration but a reality,
in the areas of life where it most counts, from government to
enterprise. And they're achieving it, too. Under the banner of Gender
is My Agenda, with the encouragement of the African Union, which has
named this the Decade of African Women, small women's groups across
the African continent are coming together to lobby, draw strength,
learn leadership and conflict-negotiating skills and support each
other in creating and sustaining small businesses.
Women's role in conflict resolution was highlighted in Liberia, first
in ending the bloody reign of Charles Taylor and then in electing the
first ever female African president, the recent Nobel Peace prize
nominee Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Johnson-Sirleaf has also this year won
the coveted African Gender Award for helping poor women send children
to school and for developing a female enterprise fund. In neighbouring
Rwanda, women now outnumber men in parliament (by 52% to 48% men).
Conversely, in the UK there are more blokes called Dave and Nick in
government than there are women MPs. Women continue to hover at a
steady 19% in the chamber, put off perhaps by a testosterone-fuelled
climate where the last two prime ministers' wives have given up high-
flying careers to support their husbands or simply to satisfy the
perceived demands of middle England. Meanwhile, deputy prime minister
Nick Clegg, instead of receiving praise, was drowned in a chorus of
derision for attempting a degree of shared parenting with his working
wife Miriam.
In the face of such continuing inequities, do a straw poll in a room
full of modern Brits and you'll find that those willing to commit to
the F word are few and far between. But, Top Gear presenters aside, I
wonder if members of either sex actually disagree with what feminism
set out to achieve, which is the social, economic and political
equality of the sexes (see any definition for confirmation of those
goals). Better yet, it's a battle we've all but won. Time for a pat on
the back to all concerned, and special thanks to Emmeline Pankhurst,
Germaine Greer and the rest.
The myth of equality, or near enough, was one I fell for like so many
others until I was asked to participate in a debate at the Royal
Geographical Society a few years ago. "We're All Feminists Now"
asserted the motion – and faced with the literary might of the likes
of Howard Jacobson and Tim Lott I was initially struck dumb, fearing
it was going to be a tough challenge to argue the opposite. A quick
Google put me straight. Two-thirds of children denied school are
girls, 64% of the world's illiterate adults are women, 41m girls are
still denied a primary education, 75% of civilians killed in war are
women and children, causing Major-General Patrick Cammaert, the former
UN peacekeeping commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to
declare in 2008: "It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a
soldier in modern conflict."
These are staggering statistics, and yet not powerful enough to make
arguing for women's rights a respectable pursuit, rather than the
aggressive histrionics of popular perception. International Women's
Day, the one day a year when we're encouraged to celebrate what we've
achieved and highlight what still needs to be done, conjures less bile
than the F word, but also more apathy. When women are allowed to vote,
work, choose when to have babies and dress in whatever fashion pleases
them, what on earth do they need their own day for as well?
The fact that 700,000 people will experience domestic violence in the
UK, and 90% of them are white British females, that there are sex
slaves imported daily to this country who live lives of abject terror,
that equal pay is still not a reality nearly four decades after the
act enshrining it was passed, that the conviction rate in rape cases
still hovers around 6.5%, that only 12% of the UK's boardroom seats
(as compared to Norway's 32%) are occupied by women, are just a small
smattering of reasons why women's rights should remain a priority even
here in the UK.
Further afield, the positive impact that gender equality can and is
beginning to make in the developing world can't be underestimated.
Recent research from the International Food Policy Research Unit finds
that equalising women's status would lower child malnutrition by 13% –
that's 13.4 million children – in South Asia and by 3% (1.7 million
children) in sub-Saharan Africa. That's a lot of lives to save by just
doing what's right.
Saving women's lives in childbirth and protecting them from HIV
infection must remain a priority, but if those women have no rights or
opportunities, you are also sentencing them to a life of unadulterated
hardship. Yet try to tell the stories of the inspirational groups of
feisty femmes currently creating havoc with the status quo in the
developing world, or make a programme highlighting the quantifiable
difference to a country's GDP that comes with educating girls, or
celebrate the small business women across Africa who keep that
continent alive, and interest evaporates.
My email to the BBC requesting some form of support for International
Women's Day didn't get a reply. You could be forgiven for thinking
that, in this country, what matters to women is still not considered a
priority. Instead, people ask why there isn't an International Men's
Day – the only response to that being that it happens on the other 364
days of the year. I'm not being dismissive, but continuing my quick
perusal of feminism's failures across the globe makes the need to
carry on shouting from a soapbox pretty clear.
Gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women
aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war.
Basically it's safer to spend Friday nights chain smoking on the M1
with a bag of Congolese mosquitoes, in fog, than to be a woman in
large swathes of the world. It's not possible to have a daughter (as I
do) and ignore the fact that every year, 60 million girls are sexually
assaulted at or en route to school. One in five women will become a
victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. One in four women
will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime – many of these
on a number of occasions. Women who experience violence are up to
three times more likely to acquire HIV. Indeed, it is now among women
and children, not the men spreading it, that Aids is most prevalent.
Among national governments, 29% lack laws or policies to prevent
violence against women. Women hold only 19% of the world's
parliamentary seats, perfectly echoed in our own chamber. Have you had
enough yet? I certainly had.
Rage is a powerful motivating force, I discovered, and I decided to
see for myself what was happening out there. I visited Internally
Displaced Peoples camps in Chad where women refugees from Darfur were
being raped daily when they ventured out to gather firewood so they
could cook for their children. In Mozambique I cried frustrated tears
as the 12 women farmers gathered around me raised their hands in shame
and in unison to indicate that every one of them was a victim of
domestic violence, a crime they were campaigning to have outlawed. And
yes, this was only last year.
So forgive me if I struggle to find sexist jokes funny in a country
where sex slavery is on the rise and 16- and 17-year-old girls from
countries around the world have been abducted, raped and forced into
prostitution. Though I might chuckle a bit if those jokes were being
told by a Bangladeshi businesswoman celebrating her daughter's
Cambridge degree… Is it triumphalist to applaud when a woman over 50
takes on the discriminatory ageism of a giant corporation and wins, as
in the case of TV presenter Miriam O'Reilly? And we are the lucky
ones, living in a society where the possibility of justice, if not
always the reality of it, exists.
There are women all over the world to whom the bounty of our lives is
utterly unimaginable. Until a couple of years ago I was guilty, as
many of us are, of charity fatigue. I just couldn't be bothered to
wear one more T-shirt, donate one more item of clothing, go to one
more carol concert or buy one more charity record. Until the extent of
the greatest crime of the 21st century, a crime being perpetrated
against millions of my fellow women denied even basic human rights,
became too much to bear.
That's why a group of us set up Great – the Gender Rights and Equality
Action Trust. That's why individuals like Annie Lennox and President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became active patrons. But it's not just
"sisters that are doing it". Bono and Damon Albarn have joined our
ranks – this is not a women's issue any longer; this is a human issue.
There's a new wave of support sweeping from the developed to the
developing world through women joining forces and rolling up their
sleeves to lend a hand. Weareequals.org is a coalition of NGOs large
and small, which have joined forces to pursue gender equality as a
tool for economic empowerment. Countries where girls are educated and
women play their part in government are places where peace reigns and
economies begin to flourish, and women are more interested in ending
wars than starting them – there are endless statistics that prove this
to be the reality.
The emancipation of women is the only possible future for the
developing world, as it was and continues to be for us. There are too
many people on this planet for us to be able to afford to leave nearly
50% of them in penury, uneducated and without a voice. Making women
equal partners makes sense for both sexes. My profound hope is that we
can, men and women alike, work together to create the circumstances in
which International Women's Day can become the cause for celebration
it should be. Once that's been achieved we'll work on creating that
International Men's Day, too – promise.For more information about
Great, go to thegreatinitiative.com
Mariella Frostrup is a TV presenter and Observer columnist
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
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