Gender Alarm: The Unstoppable Voices of girls and women

Gender equality is the only sure path to global peace, but it is proving to be a rocky and threatening road. Girls and women everywhere confronting gender hatred and the consolidation of these narratives as a global community are meeting with backlash from traditionalists, male haters of women's progress, and those who refuse to accept change and social justice for all.
There is a welcoming sign in two stories in the news this week. The first is the compelling courage of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year old Bangladesh girl who was shot by the Talaban for attending school and encouraging other girls to do the same as their human right.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19893309
There is also the story of Australia's PM Julia Gillard, who spoke out vehemently in their Parliament on histories of misogyny and gender discrimination in social and political life.
http://gawker.com/5950200/australian-pm-julia-gillard-unleashes-awesome-blistering-speech-over-oppositions-sexismhttp://gawker.com/5950200/australian-pm-julia-gillard-unleashes-awesome-blistering-speech-over-oppositions-sexism
I see consonance, courage, and a call to action on standing the dangerous ground of gender equality.
How does it look from where you stand. And, by the way, where DO you stand?

Young leaders in Aussieland, Crowdfunding, Ending poverty. The pride of our planet!

The wonderful wise feminist Cynthia Enloe wrote the Preface to my book, "Women, war, and violence: Personal perspectives and global activism. Read her Metta Center interview on why the world should take women seriously. Photo/interview courtesy Metta Center/Stephanie Van Hook

http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/profiles/blog/show?id=780588%3ABlogPost%3A772417

Children Come fFirst! # 1 Global Priority: Official Won't Back Down Trailer

UNICEF - Ethiopia - In Ethiopia, more HIV-positive mothers deliver babies free of the virus

High maternal mortality rates in Ethiopia mean that giving birth outside of hospitals for 90% of women is life-threatening. Addressing the problem with a 'Whole Systems' approach like this begins to empower women with education, confidence, and medicine and protects their children. With targeted funds and more clinics/centers, such programs could be replicated elsewhere. Societies' growth and prosperity is prevented without a baseline commitment to girls' and women's health, mental and physical.

UNICEF - Ethiopia - In Ethiopia, more HIV-positive mothers deliver babies free of the virus

 As one Kenyan mother said: "I want to bring every good thing to one child before I have another."
Population control can mean women (and girls) being able to control their own reproduction.
Listen in on Wed. 11 July to the live-streamed Summit on Family Planning from the UK. Making contraception, condoms, or other preventative sex methods available is a way of educating choice into our lives. Smart women, smart families, smart power !

http://www.londonfamilyplanningsummit.co.uk/

IS POVERTY REALLY DECREASING?

This recent World Bank report says poverty is decreasing across the globe. Yes, China's poverty/ prosperity story is a big part of the statistical picture, but what about consistent reports that food crises and land grabs are devastating some of the more pristine regions of the world?
While the graph depicts the quantitative story, there is a qualitative story that underlies these numbers. The bumper sticker on my car reads 'No farms, no food'. As the EU and other global players buy up land in Africa to grow biofuels for more efficient cars, this "Green Dream" only benefits the richer nations of the world. As the land is 'grabbed', local food produce is unaffordable for locals.
How "Green" is your dream now, Europe? Starvation, hunger, malnutrition, and transactional sex for food are now part of your hallowed dream, my friends.

20120303_WOC674.gif (GIF Image, 595 × 385 pixels)

"For development to occur it is necessary that there be a movement of search and creativity having its  seat of decision in the searcher, that this movement occur not only in space, but in the existential time of the conscious searcher.”

-Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed


These young women in Buchanan City, Liberia are workshopping their own conscious search for a better life. Despite the increasing deterioration of society everywhere, much of the world is also rethinking,  rebuilding, and reuniting. As more and more civil society, grassroots organizations, interfaith groups, and many community-based organizations come together to demand social justice and equal rights, we can see the tiny glimmerings of peace. But la lucha continua-the struggle continues. Share projects underway in your neck of the woods.

Getting Men to the Gender Equality Table

Once again, a recent study on yet another form of GBV(gender-based violence) is garnering media attention. Breast-ironing, a cultural practice that inhibits the growth of breast tissue in young girls, is highlighted in a report by the Feinstein international Center (May 2012). Kudos to this study (and blog) which adds to the existing research /media exposure on gender-based violence and the evidence base being created about GBV as the world's most serious public health crisis. Also, RENATA-the Aunties Assoc.-is a good start. The practice of BI also exists in parts of Guinea Bissau, Benin, Guinea, Togo, and Chad. The surgical mutilation of the body has existed since ancient times and,unfortunately, also remains a central component of sexuality, self-image, and identity in upper-income ("developed") nations. Social pressures and cultural practices that harm or violate the rights of children need to be abolished, no question, and in whatever country. However, re-educating girls and boys (group education) on their nascent equality is the best grass-roots approach since the demands/entitlements of male sexuality and authority are at the heart of this, and other forms of,  violence against girls. Men and fathers are being drawn into activism at the local level as they have been on other related family issues in many parts of the world. Policy and institutional change are also occurring slowly. See 'What Men Have to Do With it" (Instituto Promundo/ICRW)

Sunday Easy Rider

Sunday mornings...the bike ride to the beach nearby my house in Boston. Welcome to the renewal of my Sunday commentary---SER(Sunday Easy Rider). The world may be in chaos, but the beach beckons all, the dog walkers, the elder Asian Tai Chi faithfuls, the lovers walking, the tan-seeking man who rides his bike to the beach collapsing into the diamond-glistening sand, the family dad helping his daughter build a sand castle. If you are a "water baby" you get the obsession-anything to be near the ocean. When I lived in land-locked Johannesburg for a year, I regularly rose at 4 or 5AM, hopped in the car, and drove the 7 hrs. to Durban just to smell the ocean, to see the sun transform the wave-capped ocean into day-twinkling stars, ebbing and flowing. If you had the misfortune of being in the car with me, you had only one potty-stop. Sorry. I needed to get their fast!
The reality is that genocide despots Charles Taylor (Liberia) and Ratko Miladic (Bosnia) are being tried at the Hague as the International Criminal Court confronts these  war criminals; several others are being lined up around the world and it seems we're finally getting the hang of making the bad guys pay for evil. Women and children have been some of the most vulnerable targets of war-related violence. This is one of many scenarios that reasserts the human struggle for social justice, punishment for immoral and illegal activities globally, and a war-weary species that desperately seeks a peace-loving future. One of the central shifts underway is the active repression of a level of masculine aggressiveness socialized into our national cultures and the even more active pursuit of feminine perspectives, voices, and activism arising from women and men everywhere from civil society agencies to the halls of government. Our globalizing identities seek a higher level of humane performance in all of our dealings, public and private. The long-term demand from traditional masculinity for sex trafficking, war as the ubiquitous problem-solver, and so many unexamined behaviors rooted in gender imbalances is asking us to re-examine 6000 of human evolution to remake our species, to think and do life differently. It's about time. Go to the beach and think about it.... I'll be back next Sunday. Meanwhile, speak your peace.....

"Morningsong for a Tillian King-Rodney Revisited

Our beloved Rodney King is a recovering alcoholic and, seemingly, a forgiving man. As welcome as that is, violence and racism remain from then  until now. As they say, don't believe the hype from CNN. The real story is persistent poverty, vulnerability to racial profiling, and systematically underdeveloped schools for predominantly minority children and youth. Last evening we joyously consumed "Fela", the play about Nigeria's Fela Kuti. The play was fabalicious; the message, a cautionary tale, again, about violence and the state. At one point in the play, miniature coffins of those  killed in Nigeria's political violence were stacked and, appropriately, Trayvon Martin's coffin
topped the pile. My poem "Morningsong for a Tillian King" written in commemoration of the Rodney King incident, will be performed this fall, a collaboration with artist colleagues.

Our beloved world is consumed with deepening violence.
Tell us what you're doing to eradicate violence.


http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/28/us/rodney-king-profile/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Crossing the Gender Line-Egypt and the world

Recently, my keynote comments at Texas Tech University (4-13-12) included "  the problem of the 21st century is the challenge of the gender line". There's nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. From Egypt's gender struggles and the renewed contempt for women's humanity and citizenship there, to stories of increased violence against women in the form of forced sterilization, or the 'war on women' in US politics, no/low access to health care or political participation, or the daily confrontation with prejudice & brutality, women are saying 'there's no turning back'. This is a battle and it IS about power, ignorance, and 'keeping things tidy for men' so that they never have to change and grow into better men. How juvenile!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17820809
In this BBC interview, Mona Eltahawy tells it like it is. The "Arab Spring" will fail if women don't take their rightful place in societies around the world, whatever their status, whatever the deal.
Moral courage is what we women do best. It will be our gift to the future, but its' energies will atrophy if we don't use them. Do the right thing.

In my closing keynote remarks, I quoted writer Sherri tepper: "

“Some of us went to the brides in India, and the girls being cut, and the mothers told to kill their baby daughters. Some went among women who were alone, teaching them to join together, for there is hope in two women, help in three women, strength in four, joy in five, power in six, and against seven, no gate may stand. Some even went among men to tell them that a battle was coming, to explain that it is not male god against male devil, nor is it female against male; it has nothing to do with gender but with dominion.”

Speak out!

So here we go again, unnecessary violence! I wear my hoodie in solidarity with Mr. and Mrs. Martin b/c were I them, I would be inconsolable as a parent. In these moments there is no 'hierarchy of oppression' whether in Baghdad or Florida. These are all our children and we are leaving them a dreadful legacy of discrimination-as-usual. We are in the midst of that "dangerous course", one marked by the cultures of violence of our age. And beyond race, the Trayvon murder is, to me, a horror story about a man and a boy and the war on our children in every nation in the world. We seem to give them up to violence much too easily. Either it's sending them off to war to kill other people's children, ensnare them in human trafficking, or watch them kill one another as if each human life were expendable. Where is our sense of shame?

From an unlikely source-Charlotte Bronte-these thoughts are offered: " “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.” Many Americans who are aware of the extent of racism in U.S. culture know that 'Trayvon Martin cases' recur on a daily basis in almost every state and throughout the world, to both young men and women. I remember my father having a strong aversion to the police b/c his was the era of the 1930's when lynching and Emmett Till's murder (1955) were fresh realities, even in Cambridge(MA), the city of his birth and where I was raised. Douglas Blackmon's conscience-crushing Pulitzer text Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to WWII(2009) described the illegal bondage of Black citizens about which my Dad knew from 'the grapevine'. Dad has passed away a few years before the Rodney King incident (1991) but it would have broken his peace-loving, boogie-woogie heart to have watched the infamous Holliday videotapes of excessive force by the LAPD.  And James Byrd's 'lynching-by-dragging' murder (Texas 1998) would have sent him over the edge. I am skipping over the bad parts-all of the other unknown, young men of color (and other ethnics) whose mortality arrived too soon for them to grow into men. The murders of Vincent Chin and Matthew Shepherd, however, would have equally tested his faith in American society. Indeed, I was more than lucky to be raised by such a lover of humanity, one who regularly brought home strangers of every race to our family table for a meal.

Our work to eliminate prejudice is oil-rigg deeper, requires that we're man and woman enough to go to darker places within ourselves to redeem our country's destiny and our children's futures. No joke. The 'mutual understanding, amity, and sustained cooperation' required to eradicate race hatred and the war on our children is a lifetime commitment, not a media frenzy that activates our momentary shame. 

What was absent from Zimmerman was this: freedom from fear...

People- not systems- will gradually transform the world

[A]ny agency whatever, though it be the instrument of mankind's greatest good, is capable of misuse. Its proper use or abuse depends on the varying degrees of enlightenment, capacity, faith, honesty, devotion, and highmindedness of the leaders of public opinion."-'Abdu'l-Baha




This quote got me thinking about the current frenzy for world change. Everywhere, civil society is awakening, online causes are proliferating, violence, conflict,  and natural disasters continue unabated, and governments are being toppled. The moral and ethical center of human existence is not only being scrutinized, but is being manipulated by powerful forces within a very dysfunctional human family. The pressure and complexity of human problems can be overwhelming, even to individuals and institutions who look like they know what they're doing.


In the moment it is tempting to get out there, jump into the fray, and do what you think is good.

Things to think about:
1-Take a good look at your spiritual assets; without them (spiritual qualities), you're just like the next person;
2-"Fact" before "Act"; Be informed and get ALL the facts before you choose your path;
3-Consider your 'humanity before humanitarianism', meaning take a personal accounting of who you are as a human being before you wander aimlessly into 'do-gooderism'
4- Count the blessings of being able to serve others. Its' rewards are endless!

Haiti and the African Union-Uniting the African Diaspora

As an observer to the African Union for years, the Western hemisphere's most impoverished nation -Haiti-will finally become a formal member in 2013. What are the advantages to Haiti? From the 'Arab Spring' to 'Occupy', the worlds' people are in the grip of revolution. Only two years after the earthquake(2010) and devastating hurricane (2004), and decades of systematic  impoverishment, is the Martelly regime doing good by Haiti? More than 200,000  children work as 'restavecs' (unpaid household servants) and gender inequality is swelling.

http://www.bet.com/news/global/2012/02/07/haiti-to-join-african-union.html

The 'Arab Spring moves to Sudan

In Sudan this past Friday, the Bashir regime police forces stormed the University of Khartoum in a pre-emptive move to stop a student demonstration planned for today. The 'Arab Spring', like other revolutions, is a movement of the citizenry to exercise their universal right of protest. 300 students , arrested in Khartoum this weekend in the night while sleeping, were interrogated, jailed, and later released. They join students throughout the Arab world who have become the vanguard in helping to shape the future of global governance based upon equality and justice. this is a human wildfire that cannot be stopped.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201202180112.html

Civil society movement will revolutionize everyone!

Global unrest, street protests, and citizen activism are happening everywhere as broad social movements that express civil discontent about social and economic inequalities, and lead to revolution and change. From every level of society around the world, our world is changing. Change is inevitable, healthy, and life-enhancing. In my travels on and offline, I am interacting and working with people-in villages, on webinars, on projects, in cities. As conflicts mount, as traditional power is challenged, we're all feeling a greater interdependence. Average citizens are using collective action to demand social transformation through innovative uses of technology and social networking, anti-violence campaigns, civil society alliances, and community organizing as forms of civic participation. From Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together and the ‘Arab Spring’, climate change to immigration reform, widening economic inequalities, to the new learning modalities of the Digital Age and Open Courseware that democratizes education, we all are caught in the mix. We ALL have skin in the game.  Social movements aim to raise human consciousness, improve the quality of life for all, and challenge political repression or economic crisis through grass-roots movements that resist government crackdowns and confront corporate greed. It is an exciting time to be alive!

Check in with your projects, your commitments, your new circles of co-workers rebuilding society everywhere. Meanwhile, view this episodic cartoon on development in South Africa-using art for civil and political awareness.

http://cdrablog.net/2012/02/13/civil-society-at-the-crossroads/

Racism and Development

In the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development [Consumption], Chief of Women's organizations, Bisi, Ogunkele stated at a CNN panel that preceded the conference "If the rich nations of the world do not share their wealth with the poor, the poor will share their poverty with the rich". 'Lower-income'/'Developing Nations' demanded that he conference's focus on 'development' be renamed 'population and consumption. Their position was that the 'west'/'developed nations' were over-consuming the planet's resources as rapidly as the 'Developing nations' were overpopulating. Time for a truce and a new approach some 18 yrs. after that conference? The reality is that poverty and its minions have spread globally, despite some increases in some measures (e.g, literacy and disease prevention in some settings).

Where are we to focus our attention? What new directions, principles, or approaches can we imagine?

In the current climate of global chaos, financial collapse, environmental degradation, and widening gaps between wealth and poverty, we have much to ponder, to confront in ourselves , and much t to change. The global development community is a cauldron of individuals, motives, and practices that are unsustainable in their current configuration and worldview. We have been focusing, wholeheartedly, on poverty reduction, "the poor", and the alleviation of problems associated with the lack of material resources. We might shift our attention to 'wealth reduction', a strategy that requires personal reflection and overcoming the fear of living with less. But the latter reveals that living with less is better for human contentment and better for the environment.
Various impact assessments and research studies have provided adequate testimonials to the links between literacy, income, and longevity-even 'happiness'-  as one set of indicators of 'quality of life'. 'How Matters' has been blogging about race and development and has been brave enough to raise the spectre of the "R" word-racism http://www.how-matters.org/2012/01/17/the-elephant-hasnt-left-the-room/

To what extent is racism embedded in those constructions of the haves/have not gap and how to resolve this global crisis, esp. in our approaches to local and international development in every country?

These are critical questions we discuss in my "Globalism, racism, and human rights" course at a US university and in my "Changing Ourselves" workshop -'Games People Play'. In mid 20th c. social psychologist Gordon Allport wrote the classic, "The Nature of Prejudice". Among other research insights, he stated that a person is more likely to admit they're a liar, cheat, or thief than admit to being a racist. Being a 'racist', of course, makes everything more personal than discussing 'racism'.
Join in and share both your thoughts and what you are doing to eliminate all forms of prejudice in your own life and work. Don't be shy!

Restoring Dignity: A Toolkit for Religious Communities to End Violence Against Women | Soul Beat Africa

The religions of the world have a major role to play in restoring peace and equal rights. The nobility and dignity of every human being
hinges on our ability to end the prevalence of gender-based violence. Churches, mosques, temples and every religious fellowship, in their access to
vast populations might use this toolkit to launch campaigns and build programs in their communities to raise consciousness and alter the thinking
of individuals. Violence, in all of its forms, in both peacetime and wartime calls into question the very soul of a family or a nation and marginalizes
its prospects for success. Religious practice, if it calls itself righteous, cherishes women and girls and supports a better quality of life for them.
Men play a major role in these efforts. Since men dominate in clerical roles in most traditional religions for the moment, mens' involvement in
raising the standards of human behavior and modeling true manhood are essential starting points for achieving equality.

Restoring Dignity: A Toolkit for Religious Communities to End Violence Against Women | Soul Beat Africa

Rio rallies for YARAN-imprisoned Iranaian Bahai's

Brazilians in Rio are supporting the awareness campaign of Iranian Baha'is imprisoned for their Faith. The Baha'i prisoners, currently referred to as the seven "Yaran", have been imprisoned for several years in an effort to wipe out this religious community. Around he world, men and women of peace, social justice, and freedom are is being mobilized. In the US, the "Education Under Fire" campaign being toured with actor, Rainn Wilson, is calling attention to the additional violation of the right to an education being denied to Iranian Baha'i youth. In an effort to provide Rio has diligently mobilized its' citizens to respect religious diversity. For three centuries, the Baha'i Faith in Iran has suffered on-going persecution. With the establishment of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, the persecution of the religious rights of citizens means that Iran has been a relentless violator of those rights and ignores its obligations as a member of the family of nations. Baha'is are only one of the oppressed minority communities in Iran.