Stand Up and Speak Out!!

Today is International Women’s Day, a day for marking the achievements of the so-called fairer-sex.  How ironic, then, that on this day – when the theme of this year’s event is “Empower Women: End Hunger and Poverty” – I read on the Independent’s website that President Karzai of Afghanistan has taken a major step backwards for his country and endorsed the recommendation by the religious council that women go back to second-class citizen status.

It’s believed the recommendation that “men are fundamental and women are secondary” came about as a means of placating the Taliban and bringing them to the table in an attempt to bring the war in Afghanistan to an end, although the fact that President Karzai endorsed the motion on the very same day six British soldiers were killed has raised questions in some quarters as to whether we should still be sending our service personnel to die in a country which appears to be reneging on the issue.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for bringing this war to an end as quickly as is humanly possible, and I’m not so naïve as to think this is something we in the West can achieve with our Afghan counterparts without including the Taliban, but am I prepared to countenance this at the loss of the progress which has been made to the issue of women’s rights in the country?  No sir, I am not.  Under the Taliban girls were barred from school and women from employment, and that’s without invoking the ridiculous laws about wearing make-up or the brutal public stonings they carried out (if you haven’t seen Sairah Shah’s powerful and moving documentary ‘Beneath the Veil’, which focuses on this issue, I strongly suggest you try and track a copy down); on the day which aims to bring the issue of women’s poverty – which lack of education is a huge contributor to – to the attention of the wider world, how anyone can sit by and allow such a thing to pass without comment is beyond me. 

But it’s not just in Afghanistan that women’s issues need to be shouted from the rooftops as proof of how far we haven’t come; in the UK, too, we’re not exempt from gender inequality.  The most obvious issue, of course, and the one which everyone seems aware of, is the pay gap between men and women and that infamous ‘glass ceiling’, but it’s not just economics.  The past week has seen scathing comments directed at the Government over the funding cuts to organisations which support women fleeing domestic violence; the closing of at least two women’s refuges; and the proposed changes to the Legal Aid Bill, all of which are, for the most part, going to affect women rather than men.  Now obviously men are victims of domestic abuse, but the vast majority of those enduring the abuse are women, and this is yet another example of the gender inequality which exists in our green and pleasant land.  If a victim approaching the courts for help in getting away from her violent partner or ex-partner cannot say she has a non-molestation order against them, and if there has not been a criminal conviction, then legal aid will not be granted.  Given that the vast majority of domestic abuse victims don’t go through the criminal justice system, this puts yet another obstacle in the path of anyone wanting to get out of a situation which no one should ever have to find themselves in.

Then there are our teenage daughters, sisters, cousins.  Oh ladies, we’ve let them down as well.  According to a new report by the NSPCC, more than a third of teenage girls have experienced some form of sexual violence; one in five believe that if a boy spends money on them, he has the right to receive sex in return, regardless of the girl’s own feelings; and some even believe that if they have sex with one boy, his friends have the right to have sex with her as well.  They don’t recognise that what’s happening to them is sexual violence, sexual assault, even rape.  How did we let this happen?  How did we as a society make it acceptable for the next generation not to believe they are entitled to keep their bodies sacred; that no means no; that achieving social status doesn’t have to mean having sex with as many people as possible?  How did we let them think that rape is only what happens when a stranger grabs you off the street and bundles you into an alleyway or a deserted park when it’s dark, and not tell them that rape can also be about giving into pressure from the boy you sit next to in maths class every day?  Are we raising a generation that won’t be empowered enough to say no; who think that the battles for feminism – that dirty word – have all been won and so they have to go along with these things?

It’s not just sex, either – what of the pressure on women to be ‘thin’?  There was a report on the Independent’s website this week about modelling agencies once again standing accused of putting pressure on their models to maintain ridiculous and unobtainable weights, contributing to yet another rise in the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia.  These models, and myriad celebrities along with them, are everywhere; their thinness is constantly being pushed into the consciousness of our society and so no one whatsoever should be remotely surprised that girls as young as eight are being admitted to treatment centres with anorexia.  Enough already.

When the original Suffragettes chained themselves to railings, threw themselves under horses, endured hunger strikes and the barbaric consequences of the Cat and Mouse Act – and, yes, used violence – to get their message across, they envisioned a better word for their daughters; a world where men and women would be treated fairly and equally.  They would have been horrified that we have ‘settled’ for a bland version of equality; where ‘flexible’ working hours often means less pay and where we are still taught to be ‘the little woman’, although with a focus on being the right weight, staying off our own streets after dark because of the danger and accepting the still deeply misogynistic culture which constantly pervades our society.  The women who fought for abortion and contraceptive rights would be outraged that these things were still under attack, that women in Virginia could be subjected to a new law which would force them to have a vaginal ultrasound when seeking an abortion, no matter what their reason.  The women who bravely stood up for the rights of all men and all women to be equal would shake their heads in confusion at the fate of the women in Egypt, who were physically and sexually assaulted on International Women’s Day last year by the same men who had stood side-by-side with them months earlier to bring about the downfall of President Mubarak.  And the ghosts of those women who starved themselves to death in the name of women’s suffrage would quiver with rage at the discovery that women are still having to take such extreme measures to get their voices heard, that two members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot are on hunger strike in a Moscow jail after their arrest for singing less-than-complimentary songs about Vladimir Putin and his not-at-all-rigged election victory.

Our foremothers fought and died for our right to vote, to be treated as equal citizens.  Even in the US, that great bastion of supposed tolerance and equality, had to amend its great Constitution from “all Men are created equal under God” to include women and the black population.  In the Sixties our mothers fought for the right to the contraceptive pill; in the Seventies our older sisters marched for all sorts of issues.  How horrified would they be at the way things have turned out, I wonder…?

I know it isn’t all doom and gloom.  I know that in the Western World, at least, things have come a long way.  But the battles haven’t all been won and it’s up to us to stand up and speak out; to rally together as all those women who went before us once did; and to shake ourselves out of our complacency and polite acceptance of the status quo.  I want you to be furious at the plight of women in Afghanistan if this new ‘recommendation’ becomes enforceable.  I want you to be sickened by the illegal weddings of young girls in India – some as young as 7 or 8 – to men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers, which are all done under the cover of night to prevent not the police being informed (for they turn a blind eye in many regions) but to stop the NGO’s coming and taking the girls away to safety.  But I also want you to be furious that Bob across the office from you, who does exactly the same job you do, still gets paid more than you do.  I want you to be sickened that your 8 year old daughter worries she might be too fat to be considered worthwhile, or that your 15 year old niece thinks the only way to get anywhere in life is to let some boy have sex with her even though she’s not really sure she’s ready for it.  I want you to stand up and scream from the rooftops that domestic abuse is an aberration which needs to be destroyed once and for all; that you have the right to choose an abortion if you so wish it, without being made to feel like a criminal; that you are more – so very much more – than that fabulous haircut and superb bikini body you so pride yourself on. 

Deeds, not words, was the motto of the original Suffragettes.  Enough is enough.  It’s time to stop talking about how “something needs to be done” and time to actually do it.  We need to educate ourselves as well as the next generation, and we need to make sure we fight as hard for our rights as Sylvia Pankhurst and the rest did.  We know things aren’t right, girls, but unless we take that first step to trying to change it, they aren’t going to get any better…