meeting in the aisle

The poverty puzzle - again

Yesterday I posted about an incredible book I just read called “I Shall Not Hate” by Izzulden Abuelaish. It’s incredible because it was written by an incredible man who, despite everything, still manages not to hate. But this post isn’t about the book, except to say go read it.

What I want to talk about is what the book motivated me to do. After reading the book, and gaining a much greater insight into the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, I wanted to do something. Of course, one of the most powerful things you can ever do for a cause you care about is to tell people. In our ever-connected world, the telling people part is made about as easy as possible. And I’m telling people, don’t worry about that. But then I decided I wanted to do more.

Coincidentally, I got an e mail yesterday saying that my kiva loan had been paid back. About 6 months ago I lent some money through kiva to a woman’s group in Senegal, and yesterday, they paid me back. “Great,” I thought, I can now lend this money to a Palestinian woman who is looking for a loan.

According to Kiva, since 2005 they have leant $275 million in loans around the world, and there are thousands of people at any one time looking for a loan on kiva. Thousands.

Naively, I thought I’d be able to lend money to any number of Palestinian women. But when it came time to look through all the loans and choose, all I saw was a wall of male faces. In fact, there was not a single woman looking for a loan on her own.

In the end I chose to fund the only female face I saw, who was a woman pictured with her husband. She runs a grocery store, and wants a loan to increase her produce so she can sell more. Apparently, her husband has a stable job, but there is always need for more income.

So I lent money to this woman’s grocery shop, but was left feeling a bit depressed. This only got worse when I looked at the overall kiva loans and saw that there are about 1,500 men looking for loans, versus 500 women.

And yet another piece of the poverty puzzle becomes blatantly obvious once again. We will never be able to eradicate extreme poverty when women are being excluded from education, and earning an income.

A step in the right direction in Saudia Arabia?

I woke up this morning to the news that Saudi Arabia intends to finally give women the right to vote. And then I heard the catch - that these reforms won’t come into effect until 2015. 2015. Yes, the year 2015.

While it’s a step in the right direction, the cynic in me wonders if this is more a token effort to keep Saudi out of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, and once things settle down (if they do) the reforms will be denied before they’re even brought in.

I hope not though, because this is truly great news, though I will let a Saudi Arabian woman have the last say:

“So I can vote, but I can’t get a driver’s licence,” said one Saudi women from Jeddah, who said she had to remain anonymous. “If I use my name I may be breaching the guardianship law here.” - quoted in The Guardian

“Get on the spouse bus” Julia!

I wish this article didn’t exist. I wish this hadn’t happened. But since it does exist, and it did happen, why don’t you pop on over to The Age and read about our Prime Minister being ordered onto the bus for wives in New Zealand last week.

Can I get three cheers for gender stereotyping?

Kill your (female) darlings

I don’t like writing sensationalist headlines, but sometimes there is just cause. The stats are out for India’s 2011 census, and the news is not good for girls. They are being killed in ever greater numbers, as the preference for boys intensifies:

In many ways, son preference is the starkest indictment on the status of women in the country. When parents make the choice to abort their unborn daughters, it is the crudest expression of a society’s shared belief that women are neither equal to men nor will they experience the same opportunities. The reasons for the son preference can be traced to social norms that are deeply entrenched within…societies that have “strong economic and social incentives to raise sons and eliminate daughters.” - India Journal: No Country for Women

In my work I speak to thousands of Australians about poverty, and explain the reasons why focusing on women and girls in developing countries is so essential.

The reality is that baby girls are being killed. If they survive birth, they are fed least and last in their families. If they reach childhood, they miss out on school and develoment opportunities. Then they are married too young. When they are married, they miss out on essential healthcare and nutrition in pregnancy, childbirth and beyond, and too often die. In wartimes and emergencies they are sexually and physically abused.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Here are three solutions you can be part of right now to help:

• The Girl Effect
• Half the Sky
• Kiva

The world’s five most dangerous countries for women

The Thomas Reuters Foundation has launched a much-needed media hub on women’s rights - Women’s Rights - Trust Law.

Weekend reader - links I loved

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Another week on the web - let’s get to it (after you’ve admired the cherubic creation above, in Paris):

Ever wondered what she really thinks? (The Rumpus, Funny Women #33)

Why did the South African President skip the UN MDG Summit? Here’s one theory.

As a self-confessed Gruen Transfer devotee, I like the sound of an open challenge to make advertising worth spreading very much (PSFK)

I also like the idea that feedback massages the brain - (SAMBA)

Design solutions for refugee camps? Yes please! (PSFK)

Meredith Maran on how she wrongfully accused her father of sexual abuse:

if I were as strong a person, as independent and critical a thinker as I’ve always liked to believe I am, could I have been convinced for eight years that something that never happened to me, happened? I don’t think so.

And finally, Gloria Steinem takes a humourous look at what the world would be like if men could menstruate.

p.s. I haven’t linked to Malcolm Gladwell’s article on why the revolution won’t be tweeted because you can find that link, and see what I think here

Sydney too violent for women - SMH reveals

It was a Saturday, around midday, and I was catching the train into the city with a girlfriend. We were excited - I was on my way to a photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Real Women” project, and that was something different for me back then.

I was 20, I was from Blacktown - only rich, thin, pretty girls got into the pages of a magazine, not short, pudgy, plain girls like me. I was going to get my makeup done professionally, and Kristy and I were chatting away, lost in our own worlds when he leant over the back of the train seat and pulled out a blood-filled syringe.

It all happened so quickly. The syringe, the demand for our money and mobile phones. The promise that he would stab me in the foot with it because he’d just got out of jail, and that’s where he’d be going back to, and he didn’t care if he made us sick, he just wanted his next hit, and “you’re just some dumb girl.”

We were scared. This was Sydney! It was the middle of the day! There were other people in the carriage! Not that they came to help.

We were lucky though. All we lost was some money, our phones, and a big bucket of naivety. In the nine years between then and now, I have gathered more stories like this, but none have had quite the same impact.

There is something about a ‘first time’ in this, but I’m not going to say it.

Instead, I’m going to track the stories about violence against women that hit the papers in Sydney and Melbourne for the next few weeks.

Thank you (!?), Sydney Morning Herald, for making this first post so easy with FIVE stories about violence and sexual harassment of women.

Monday 27th September brings us:

• League star accused of assaulting pregnant girlfriend
• Stewart charge absolutely totally unbelievable
• Sex assault on babysitter
• Home invader attacks woman with crowbar
• DJ $37m claim publicity-induced psychiatric illness in Kristy Freser0Kirk court told

Related posts:

- Think violence against women is something that happens ‘over there’ - think again.
- How unsafe should you feel?

Banning the burqa - a debate I don’t want to debate

In the previous couple of years I have lived in a majority Muslim country, Bangladesh, and traveled through Turkey and Egypt. I confess that before I had deep personal experiences with Islam as a religion, I may have thought banning the burqa could be a lesser evil for women’s empowerment than not banning the burqa.

But now I know, I was absolutely wrong.

For some women, banning the burqa would be the equivalent experience of forcing me to wear a bikini to the supermarket in Melbourne, or a mini skirt to work. And that is something I can never support, though this is not at all what the debate is about.

After watching this week’s Insight program, and reading the article The burqa mural, should it be painted over in The Punch, I am saddened by the intensity of the debate, by the fear, and by the underlying implications that burqa=Muslim=dangerous.

One of the most common reasons given on Insight for banning the burqa was security. It was argued that the burqa should be banned because it makes identification difficult, and that is a security risk.

My thoughts? It is not women in burqas I am worried about when I am walking home from the station at midnight. It’s not women in burqas I cross the road to avoid in dark streets. It is not women in burqas I was told to be wary of when being taught stranger danger.

I find it very hard to believe that crimes are being committed in any number statistically relevant for “security risk” to be a legitimate reason to outlaw the items of clothing a woman can wear outside her home. But even if is the women in burqas we need to be identifying, then there are very practical and easy ways around it - having female personnel available to make the idenitifcation when required.

This is how the rest of the world does it, and if Australia is serious about this as a security risk, then we need to be hiring women as security and law enforcement staff specifically for the purpose of identifying these women in burqas in situations where establishing identity is paramount.

The argument that banning the burqa because it infringes on the rights of women, and contributes to the oppression of women is much more complex, and has much more validity. As someone who has worked intensely on women’s empowerment issues, and women’s empowerment issues in a majority Muslim country, I feel I am in a better position than many Australians to offer my point of view, which is why I am weighing in on the debate.

Education, education, education, and I will say it one more time - education - is the key to women’s empowerment, not outlawing an item of clothing. Educating women and girls is the sole most important, influential and effective way of empowering women the world over.

The education of males is also a part of the picture, of course, but it’s not as effective as education females. It is education that will progress culture and education that will provide women with choice.

If I thought banning the burqa would lead to improvements in the lives of women, I would be all for it, but let’s be real - this is Australia. A law against a religious item of clothing worn by a very small minority of the Australian population, is much more likely to alienate women for whom wearing the burqa is an essential part of their religious and cultural identity.

It could force these women indoors, prevent them from participating in a society outside the household, and worst of all, make them feel persecuted against by a country that calls itself the lucky country, the country of the fair go.

Please, let’s not ban the burqa. Let’s not give in to fear and prejudice and bigotry. Let’s get serious about educating women and girls around the world. Let’s get serious about giving women the world over real choices.

Did you get this far? Then you should watch this video on ‘The girl effect.’

How unsafe should you feel?

I recently moved to Melbourne from Sydney, a city where I knew a sum total of three people when I first arrived, two of whom promptly went overseas. As part of the whole rigmarole associated with starting somewhere new, I spent many a cold, wintry eve stumbling around the unfamiliar streets of Melbourne in the dark, straining to read house numbers from footpaths, while trying to keep an eye out for anything ‘suspicious’.

Naturally, I felt unsafe when I turned down poorly-lit streets, or more industrial looking areas, or had to walk through a park. I felt unsafe walking alone along the side of a busy road. Unsafe walking through the grounds of the University of Melbourne. Unsafe waiting alone at the tram stop with the pub on the corner.

I remember saying to myself, “If something happens to me, I’m stuffed. I have no one to call if something happens.” (That scary, scary ‘something’).

So it comes as no surprise to me that a new study reports that almost 50% of girls under 18 feel unsafe in UK cities. This is not just a UK thing, I’d wager. Cities are scary places for half the population, if you listen to what people say.

And it’s hard not to listen to your mother, father, brother, your friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, shopkeepers, media, and everyone else inbetween. At 29 years old, I’ve been told the world is a very scary place for me, and I need to be careful.

I need to be careful of ‘rough types’ getting off the train in Footscray (Melbourne) alone at night. Careful of the men spilling out from pubs as I walk home alone from the bus in suburban Seven Hills (Sydney). Careful of rickshaw wallahs walking to work in the early hours of the morning in Chittagong (Bangladesh). Careful of men on the metro in Barcelona. Careful of tradesmen while taking travel-snaps along the back streets of Cairo. Careful of the gypsy boys walking along Nevsky Prospect in St Petersburg. And not to be outdone, I need to be careful of my male friends in every city in the world once we’ve all started to loosen up a bit, have a drink, dance, because, ‘you know how men are’.

I have tried to recall when the world became one trap after another for me, but I can’t really find a time when the world was safe. From stranger danger and neighbourhood watch as a young school girl through to now, the unsafe narrative has always been there.

You know what? I’m sick of feeling unsafe. I’m absolutely sick of the common narrative around the world being that I need to be vigilant, to always be on the lookout, because violence against me, as a woman, is always lurking just around the corner.

What will it take, I wonder, to make the world safe for me?

(This could be a good place to start - Australian men, have you taken the oath?)

Male authors are just, you know, better

I own a copy of the wonderful book 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It remains one of the best gifts I’ve received as an adult (thank you Roslyn!), despite the fact that it is terribly, disappointingly flawed, as all lists are.

First, the love. If it were not for this book acting like my personal reading reference guide at 2am when I should be sleeping, but instead am flicking through the glossy pages, full of desire for words yet unread, I would not be reading Edmund White’s perfectly titled The Beautiful Room Is Empty.

Similarly, I may have been duped into trying to toil through more Salman Rushdie than I have. To those of you who actually enjoyed Midnight’s Children - I can only assume our literary tastes are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

This book of books, this catalogue of lust, is the kind of thing I use as a more manageable form of google - a search with an end - a place where I don’t become overwhelmed because my options are finite.

What I passiontaly dislike about it though, is that it falls into the trap being heavily debated at the moment by the literati on the interwebs - it is undeniably dominated by male authors.

When it comes to books considered to be literature - books written by men get reviewed more, get more positive reviews when they are reviewed, and male authors are more than twice as likely to get a second book reviewed, at least when it comes to the New York Times Book Review, arguably the industry’s most prestigous reviewing forum.

My much loved book-list-book suffers from the same problem, which makes me angry and sad and guilty for not burning my bra (figuratively of course, they’re expensive).

You should read what The Slate and The Rumpus have to say about the issue. And then you should go and read fiction by women.

Just to start, you could try Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, or Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing or Joan Didion’s The White Album

What are your recommendations for women’s literature?