My Kindle is my new favorite resource. I've had some pretty amazing travel time lately, and that's my opportunity to read voraciously. I have been pouring over woman's rights. It started, as most great things do, with Oprah. I watched a moving, disturbing, emotional account of women in trouble, serious trouble, trouble that cannot be avoided because of location trouble, and read Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn's "Half the Sky." I was enraged about how women are treated in this world. Sold into brothels, drugged and enabled into addiction, brainwashed to believe they are nothing. I don't stop there. I read Somaly Mam's "The Road of Innocence Lost" about Cambodia and the sex-trafficking there. I'm on to Lisa Shannon's "A Thousand Voices" now, about the Congo, the worst place on earth for women, and I wonder what I need to do. I have sponsored women through Women for Women International, but I feel so small and powerless. I also know that atrocities happen in my own community, but they don't wind up on Oprah. What can I do? I can't travel to the Congo, like Ms. Shannon, I am paralyzed by fear, and I'm not that courageous, I'm afraid to admit. I am humbled by these women, yet I am not willing to endanger my life to make a statement. So maybe that is the opposite of courageous.
I do want to do something locally (think globally - act locally?), and maybe I can affect change in my own community. Women are grossly underrepresented in occupations that pay big money, this is true in my own space. And when women don't have earning power, they don't have power in their own families. It's true. Women bear the brunt of housework, of childcare, and they work full-time, but often don't make what men make. This is a travesty and keeps women enslaved. How can I help them go to college, despite the odds of being under-educated and overworked?? This is something I have to do. I just have to discover the "how."
I am an advocate for women's rights, because I have to be, because women are humans, and still without rights, we all suffer indignities, men and women alike. But the suffering of women is something I cannot ignore. I don't even know where to start, but writing it all down gives me the strength to try to find out. Do something, even if it's small. As Margaret Mead wisely said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
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