Women Rights - A Global Issue
Simone De
Beauvior in her book, The Second Sex, writes
that women and men have never shared the world in equality. Men have historically
learned to view women as not being equal, similar to a ‘master and slave’
relationship. De Beauvior stated, “Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers,
and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is
willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.” This view of women as
insignificant has occurred over time and is not the result of an historical
event.
There are still
many countries, today, that following this tradition of treated women as
insignificant, meaningless, and inconsequential. These countries do not honor
women’s rights allowing equal opportunities and protection by law. The Islam
religion, for example, which is guided by the Quran and Hadiths, regulates all
areas of a woman’s life including education, inheritance and property rights,
dress, birth control, and sex. In Saudi
Arabia, the 9 million females, regardless of their age, are treated as minors
and forbidden from traveling, studying, or working with permission from their
male guardians. Women still do not have voting rights in Lebanon, Brunei, Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Vatican City.
There are 30
countries that still allow female genital mutilation which, defined by the
World Health Organization (WHO), is “all procedures that involve partial or
total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female
genital organs for non-medical reasons.” It has been reported that over 27
million in Egypt and over 98% of the women in Somalia have undergone this
procedure.
There are many
other alarming statistics about the dangers to women in foreign countries. Here
are a few examples:
-
In Afghanistan, 87 percent of the women admit to experiencing domestic
violence.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo,
rapes are common and extremely brutal often leaving women to die or being
infected with HIV.
- In Iraq, girls are not sent to school
for fear of kidnapping and rape while more than one million women have been
displaced from their homes unable to earn enough money to eat.
- In Nepal, unmarried daughters under
the age of 13, if not married, may be sold to traffickers and widows are often
labeled as witches facing discrimination and extreme abuse.
- In Sudan, since 2003 over one million
women’s lives have been ruined by abduction, rape, or forced displacement while
access to justice is near impossible.
- In Guatemala, women are subjected to
domestic violence, rape, an epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders of hundreds
of women, and they have the second highest rate of HIV/AIDS just after
sub-Saharan Africa.
- In Mali, women are forced into early
marriages, genital mutilation, and one in ten dies during pregnancy or
childbirth.
- In the Somali capital, Mogadishu,
civil war has exposed women to daily rape, extremely poor health care for
pregnancy, and attack by armed gangs.
There are over
3.3 billion females on the planet and many are still in fear of their personal
safety and lives. Education, financial aid, and training are ways to help
through global and international programs. Awareness of these shocking and
alarming details is one of the first and best ways to start working toward
change.
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