International women's day was established in 1909 to celebrate the success of the women's rights movement. It was mostly celebrated in the USSR until the mid-70's when the rest of the word decided to pick up on it.
The idea is to celebrate and empower women, highlight their accomplishments, encourage their fight for freedom and equality. Sounds great!
Feminism is a fantastic initiative and the vast majority of us support it at least on some level...Except... that's not exactly true.
We fail in recognizing a key word in the title of the day:
International
We Europeans and North Americans are enjoying the most peaceful time in the history of humanity. We have nothing to fight for, nothing to defend. Most of us wouldn't be able to defend ourselves from an inconvenient doctor's appointment, let alone an uprising militia.
But while we do fight about right wing opinions on YouTube, details of amendments and nationalist viewpoints, we forget that out there, around the rest of the world, things aren't so peachy.
Especially for women.
Physical Safety
Women are considered physically secure in something ridiculous like 5 countries. Across the vast majority of the world, their security is considered almost non-existent. But what constitutes as unsafe? Well, to pull one example out the hat, the prevalence of genital mutilation?
FGM is a form of torture, obviously, and is practiced from infancy all the way up to adulthood, but usually up to about the age of 15. It typically removed the clitoris, sans-anaesthetic and is entirely whacko religious belief gone mad. The idea, you see, is to control a woman's sexuality and cleanliness, purity, and for some reason its the society's responsibility to decide what is and isn't proper private sexual behaviour.
In countries like Guinea, the rate of FGM is somewhere along the lines of 99%. Although statistics show FGM seems to - slowly - be on the decline, this international terror should pretty much be number 1 priority on International Women's day.
Except... not until you see what else goes on in the world:
Marriage
More religious hell.
In an absurd amount of countries, Child marriage is a prominent, legal practice, with what appears to be a dozen nations where over 10% of female children forced into marriage. But hey, at least paedophilia is low, since it's all part of marriage!
For those who might notice their own country in yellow, don't worry, that mostly means marriage can happen at 16 with parents consent, like in the UK.
In fairness, this is not always religious in nature, but comes in a culture that typically adheres to certain religions. Generally as soon as a girl starts to menstruate, they are considered a woman and thus ready to become controlled by a man. Maybe this should be your first priority instead?
Trafficking
If that doesn't take your fancy, how about this:
It's astonishing that trafficking is practiced in the vast majority of the world, perhaps more astonishing than the fact that any country at all figure it's totally fine and legal. For those not quite sure, trafficking is the practice of selling woman as a product for sexual slavery. Again, the vast majority of the world practice sexual slavery.
But hey maybe women enjoy being sex slaves, that's not necessarily rape!
Rape
Assuming you are from one of the majority of countries that seem to think along those lines, it's an interesting point. I haven't mentioned rape so far, because it's difficult to objectively put into statistics, especially when, like the next map, the very act of reporting rape is punishable:
Those countries in red may punish a woman with physical violence, exile or even death for reporting rape, even if only accused but found innocent. It's a saving face thing! Wouldn't want to disrespect the family. better to honour kill.
Speaking of which, honor killings of women are on the rise in countries such as Pakistan.
Now it is hard to get an exact number of rape per country since in many, these things simply aren't reported or even considered rape at all, but we can get a statistical feel for how bad it is internationally:
Here we can see that the vast majority of the world has rape on either prevalent or epidemic levels. But hey, it's uncommon or rare in North America and Europe!
What you can do
Our comfortable lives in our comfortable homes with fast and ubiquitous internet dulls us to reality. Barely a day passes when any of us actually think about the fact that millions of women need permission from their husbands to go outside, and must be escorted by the husband, or that millions have missing external organs because for whatever reason, God made a mistake putting it there and needs their elders to fix the problem for Him. We don't realise the extent of which slavery is still legal and heavily practiced around the world, and women are a huge victim of that trade.
All we can really do as individuals, is raise awareness, especially on days like this.
It's all very well celebrating women in science, and if you really want, you can bicker and fight to force celebrity men to actually take a pay cut because it's unfair on women who aren't as famous, and you can waste your weeks away accusing all men of being guilty sexual predators in some of the safest countries on earth where sexual predation almost never happens.
And I commend the practice of showing our young ones the accomplishments of women in the past, and reminding them what great accomplishments they can bring to the world.
But I feel we need to put far more effort into reminding the world that most countries on this Earth are discriminating against women, raping, torturing, enslaving, murdering and generally physically abusing women at alarming levels, purely on the basis that they are biologically female.
This is INTERNATIONAL Women's day. Don't forget that!
All maps come from Womanstats.org, and eye opening and reliable source of data you should all visit for a whole world more of information on the matter
I am really with you!
I guessin a lot of parts of this world, we have already made some good steps to a better equality. There need to be further more steps but we´re going into the right direction!
What we can do next is - pointing out and spreading awareness to the rest of the world, that this treatment is nothing special its just fair!
One gender isnt better than the other one - just like skin colour.
Treat others like you want to be treated! Love of Neighbour,
cause just one gender isnt enough the keep our world turning :)
All the best from Germany,
Johannes (:
Well said. In most european countries women rights are on a good level and we often forget about the fact that it is not even close in other countries.
Yeah I think many of these countries are indeed moving in the right direction... but not all of them, and some of their movement is laughable, such as when the whole world celebrated when (Saudi Arabia?) finally allowed women to drive.
Wowzers!!
Eesh.
Way too often we just focus all of our attention on our own neighborhoods and ignore the rest of the world.
Well, it's the easiest way to live life! unfortunate, but the way of life. We gotta train hard to go against habit
Amen. So much more could and should be done.
Cheers to that
Chapeau.
Remembering point 1) is important, you're absolutely right, but also we have to recognize that the situation in our own countries is also less then perfect.
Absolutely, but as I mentioned in another comment, where we live (except me I guess since I live in China), we have the freedom to practice our fight for equality and equity year-round. The same luxury cannot be said for the rest of the world
It seems women would be better off if entire cultures would change in those countries with high sex trafficking rates, rapes, genital mutilation, and honor killings. The root of it is likely political and cultural beliefs enforced by the leaders in charge and people being compliant, not condemning these atrocities against women because they see nothing wrong.
Right. There's a tradition passed down for so long without transition that they haven't kept up with global standards for whatever historical reasons. For that, women around the world need to focus on them more and show them that it is wrong
This god guy has to amend his commandments. How about don't rape people or don't cut off any body parts. But obviously ten is an even number and making graven images is worse than rape.
Haha, Amen to that... so to speak
This is a really god article and i hope that all peoples from steemit to read This. Congratulations!!!
I gave it a little boost to help out =P
This post has received gratitude of 38.98% from @appreciator courtesy of @mobbs!
Thanks for writing this article. As a husband and father, I want the important ladies in my life to feel free and live empowered lives.
Unfortunately, we live in a world that does not always support women. I had a chance to live overseas with my family for over 10 years, so your call to celebrate INTERNATIONALLY resonated with me.
Thanks again!
I'm glad I can share the experience. Though I stay away from calling myself a feminist in this current day and age, the core beliefs I strongly support and I see it failing in everyday casual scenarios in China, with women's life goal to be a housewife for a rich husband, marriage markets practically selling daughters to men because they're over 25, which at that age, they get called 'left over women' and shamed - and these are just the publicly accepted norms!
I don't know how I missed you all this time. Very nice, I wrote about gender equality and the importance of education but I was new and had no exposure on Steemit, very few people read it. I will revisit the science of mistakenly raising our boys and girls in a different way someday.
And you can read about it here, most probably you know the studies already: https://steemit.com/gender/@alexdory/a-thought-on-gender-bias-and-complying-to-the-gender-biased-world
I don't market myself very well I guess =P
That's cool i'll give it a read, good to get the word out whenever we can but especially on days where people are actually paying attention =)
Yes you had an amazing idea! Great exposure! I am very familiar with all that research you covered and we still have a long way to go, but we are making small strides in that direction. Congrats!
Proverbs 29:18
18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Father we pray that you would release vision into our mothers. Pour vision into them for such a time of this. We come against all forms of stagnancy. We speak progression into all they do, in Jesus’ name.
We are believing God for an outpouring of vision into our homes today, in Jesus’ name.
My daughter marched in the Women’s March.
Janice
Nice! A proud day I bet
This did not make my day. Hugely enlightening though. Thanks for pulling it together.
I hope it has even a tiny effect =)
It's almost like it (the movement) is motivated by something else altogether....almost an agenda....
Marxism does move in unmysterious ways...
heh shhhhhh
This is a really informative article. My students just did a Model UN on the women's autonomy over their body. It was super interesting, and they came up with excellent resolution papers.
That's great to hear. Teaching it young is probably the only way we can get around it. It's certainly a multi-generational thing we're fighting against
Thank you for writing this important and powerful post. There is a mortifyingly low amount of green across the majority of those maps. It is an arresting visual. I'm sharing this with all of my of my girlfriends and resteeming
Yep. More green needed. And that's based only on what we can know. So much is unknown in places like India, China, Indonesia etc.
That is disturbing. It could be far worse than we know.
Great post and it's good (not good) to see it on a graphically representation of how far the world has to go
For sure, it'll take beyond our lifetimes, no doubt about that =/
We so often rant about what is happening in neighboring countries! Why can not we begin to improve the world from ourselves? Why not take advantage of the occasion of this holiday and not remind our beloved women, wives, mothers, grandmothers, daughters about how much we love them?
Perhaps this act will begin to improve our world?
Our countries are already improving and have already vastly improved the local world that we live in, basic rights are enforced, freedoms are everywhere and so on. This means we have the freedom to fight for what we believe in every day of the week without issue. But that shouldn't mean we totally ignore those suffering without those freedoms everywhere else. The world will truly progress when equity (from a legal standpoint at least) is fully in practice around the world. Otherwise, we're just driving a bigger wedge between the rich and the poor, the free and the captive.
the main thing is not to forget about the women who are near when we solve the problems of world significance
Totally. But I don't think by moving our attention to those in dire need, our own society will suddenly break down into discriminatory, abusive hell, lol. It's self sustaining at a certain point
I agree with you completely! unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world! and this is very sad. but I am sure that if each of us will do good at least in our zone of influence, then the world will become better and happier.
Greetings, doce Abigail
Também sou psicólogo.
Realmente, não é em todo lugar que as mulheres ouvirão feliz dia das mulheres. Nos países muçulmanos, imagino que jamais tenham ouvido algo desse tipo. Possivelmente, são os locais em que o machismo, além de predominar, é inteiramente controlador. Aqui no Brasil há machismo também, porém, em uma quantidade de "sintomas" bem menor que lá.
Essa é uma das questões que julgo serem ruins no relativismo, pois, para relativistas, não podemos questionar a cultura deles, pois as mulheres são adeptas. Talvez até sejam, por falta de questionamento. Porém, duvido que não haja muita repressão sob as que pensam diferente....
Infelizmente é isso.
Boa noite!
Duly noted @mobbs
This definitely followed the spirit of international women's day.
A cold and sobering reminder about the state of our world.
Fuck.
Thank you for putting things into perspective for some of us who might be a little too misinformed to really see the bigger picture.
Kudos and peace
Hae-Joo
What a resourceful and amazing post. Congrats. Love it. <3
Definitely an eye-opening post with regard to how backwards many parts of the world are.
I'm from a country (India) where women are still exposed to lots of trouble. Every week I read about something bad happening to a woman or girl somewhere in India. There was once a period where women were treated so special and with all due respect. I think things are getting better every year. Hoping to see a better world in the future. The good times we had in India should be back soon. Nice article with lots of information. Happy Women's day. :)
Yeah I hear a lot about the 'rape crisis' in India. I'm not sure if it's actually worse than any other country but the fact that the attention is so huge the last year or so is a positive step, lots of protests to push the government to do more about the gang rapes and so forth that are so prominent. I can see a positive future too =)
Yes all that I hear are public incidents. Last week a 3year old girl was raped in a public transport by a gang of ppl. In front of her brother. So brutal. Hope these things vanish away in the near future.
Amazing 👍
Hey @mobbs...
Wow a definite eye opener... So much more opportunities to get it right.
I'm definitely FOR fighting for Empowering Women!! And now even more so... To Keep Our Women SAFE as well.
Blessings!
Mel @coachmelleow
Yep, we should all do our part, and all year round not just one day a year!
To me, the worst of it is that those organisations which were formed to help ensure women are treated as equal in all ways, are now supporting those nations that are red in all your maps, They even now have stated that FGM is not bad, that it is similar to body piercings.
I'm sorry, but from where I stand (old enough to remember the dreams we had years ago) and as an admirer of women, all I see is that we have taken a hundred steps backwards, now condemning girls in UK and Europe to a reversion of the barbarities of a thousand years ago.
And we dare celebrate International Women's Day !!? (or, translated into canadian: International Wopeople's Day).
Here, in Venezuela, as everybody knows, we have a lot of problems. But I must to correct you: Trafficking of people, women or men, is not legal. Of course, it is highly probable that women, and men, especially young men, have no choice but to fall into the hells of prostitution, in their own country or in other nations. On the other hand, I must say that the only reason for human trafficking is that there are countries where a lot of money is paid. That being the case, I believe that there are very few countries where there is no traffic, whether legal or illegal.
Hugs. I'll follow you... Would you follow me? ♥
If effectively is legal there, albeit not officially. In brief, a law in 2007 was put in place - better late than never!! - but never actually implemented:
!muy buen artículo y contenido!. claramente se debe hacer más desde todo los ámbitos y escalones, no basar este día en enviar o publicar una imagen... Esta en cada uno como ciudadano reconocernos, valorarnos y respetarnos.