Why should we care about gender equality?

by Charlotte Page

Because we’re not even close to getting it right.

I have been wearing black on Thursdays for over a year now to stand in solidarity with those who experience violence and discrimination on the basis of gender and the more I look into the issues the more angry I am that this is being allowed to happen. I am proud to wear black to stand alongside women who experience gender based violence, and I am happy to stand up for human rights and I am appalled at the awful abuses that happen to women every day because they are not treated with respect and as equals.

Thursdays in Black is not about devaluing raising awareness of discrimination and violence against men, it is not about female supremacy, it is about putting the issue of gender equality on the table and saying ‘are we really going to let this happen?’

I have a friend who is deeply suspicious of statistics, and so am I, but I hope he will forgive me for highlighting a few here because I think they deserve to be known:

Out of the 130 million out-of-school youth in the world, 70% are girls.
75% of all HIV/AIDS infections in sub-Saharan Africa among people aged 15-24 are young women
Around 80% of maternal deaths could be averted if women had access to essential maternity and basic healthcare services.

These are issues that represent much deeper issues. It has been proven that educating girls is one of the most important things that can be done to tackle gender inequality and consequently to tackle poverty. Girls who are educated can earn more, are more likely to educate their own children and are more able to protect themselves against HIV. Children of both sexes whose mothers die in childbirth are less likely to attend school and more likely to live in poverty.

Gender equality is something that is tied up in economic development, poverty and injustice. But it is not just something affecting less developed countries. We can’t sit back and pat ourselves on the back. While I don’t pretend to understand how the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index is worked out (though they do explain it in the report) I do understand that they measure equality of opportunity between the sexes in all the countries in the world and represent it on a scale of 0 to 1. You don’t need to understand all the maths to know that if the country ranked first in the world is only achieving a number of 0.8276 we have nothing to be complacent about.

For me, wearing black on Thursdays is about recognising that these issues exist, that they are important and that I should not get complacent. It’s about the individual stories of women who are living through appalling injustices and it is about the bigger picture across the world. But mostly it is about recognising that if we can get this gender equality thing right then the world will be a better and fairer place for all, not just women.



Sources: All statistics are from The World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report which can be found at: http://www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Women%20Leaders%20and%20Gender%20Parity/GenderGapNetwork/index.htm

The Bare Facts - Violence

Statistics on violence against women: the global picture
Sexual and gender based violence against women paints a disturbing picture, up to one-third of adolescent girls report forced sexual initiation.

For example, a recent study suggests that in the United Kingdom:

- one in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend,
- one in four has experienced violence in a relationship,
- one in six has been pressured into sexual intercourse,
- one in sixteen said they had been raped.
- Mass rape of women and girls continues to be seen as somehow a legitimate military weapon.

Reports suggest that, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a war that lasted a mere three years, somewhere between 10,000 and 60,000 women and girls were raped.
Sexual violence against men and boys continues undaunted, unreported, understudied, and too often a source of ridicule and derision.

According to a number of studies, somewhere between 5 and 10% of adult males report having been sexually abused in their childhood.

Women suffer violence in health care settings, “including sexual harassment, genital mutilation, forced gynecological procedures, threatened or forced abortions, and inspections of virginity.”

Sexual violence in schools abounds almost in every country in the world, in Canada, 23% of girls experience sexual harassment.

There was a 25% rise in rape and sexual assaults between 2005 and 2007, among all violent crimes, domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault showed the largest increase.


Adapted from www.cabsa.org.za
Author: Pieter Visser, accessed 25th November 2009

A Poem for Thursdays

by Melanie Frew

A Poem for Thursdays

Black for the night-fall; your fear of his return
Black for the bruise you try to explain away

Black for the widow; disregarded, disrespected
Black for the alcohol you drink to forget

Black for the child ripped from your womb
Black for the blood of another wasted month

Black for the skirt torn in frenzied attack
Black for the slashes on your face as a sign

Black for veil of a marriage arranged
Black for the bedroom where there’s no choice

Black for the market on which you are sold
Black for the memories of a childhood stolen

Black for the self-hatred
Black for the self-loathing

Black for the darkness that surrounds all you are
Black for the final escape on the tracks

The Bare Facts - Economics

Economic Deprivation

• Women produce nearly 80% of the food on the planet but receive less than 10% agricultural assistance i.e. access to land seeds, fertilizer or information (peace keeper)

• More than 1 billion people live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day. 70% of those people are women (kamilat.org)

• Women do 66% of the world’s work and get paid less than 10% of its income – in Africa it’s 80%

• Women comprise 21 of the 37 million people living below the poverty line in the US

• One year out of college women earn 20% less than men and 10 years later 31% less

• Women on average are away from workforce for 14.7 years compared to 1.6 years for men

• Women own around only 1% of the world's land

• Girls as young as 8 turning to prostitution in the DRC due to poverty

• 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are women

• Females in developing countries on average carry 20 litres of water per day over 6 km

The Bare Facts - Health

Women's Health

• Reproductive health services for all women would cost $12billion a year – as much as we spend on perfume in the US and Europe every year (Alan Guttmacher Institute)

• Around half of pregnant women in Southern Asia and a third of women in many countries in Africa receive no antenatal care ( UNAIDS)

• 55% of all HIV positive adults in sub Saharan Africa are women (indiafemalefoeticiede.org)

• Annually 2 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage (secondsightresearch.tripod.com)

• Annually 2 million girls between the ages of 5 – 15 are abducted, sold or trafficked into the illegal sex market (international humanitarian campaign against the exploitation of children)

• Globally women account for the majority of people aged over 60 and over 80

• Pregnant women in Africa are 180 times more likely to die than in Western Europe

• AIDS sees women's life expectancy at 43 in Uganda and Zambia

• In India, 25% of girls die before they turn 5, mostly starved or neglected.

• In India, one pregnant woman dies every 5 minutes, during childbirth.

• In India, baby girls are considered an economic burden, because of the high cost of weddings. While sons provide income and are seen as a type of insurance by their parents.

• Every year, more than 530,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes – that’s one every minute.
If this continues at the current rate, another 4 million women will die by 2015.

The Bare Facts - Violence

Violence against Women
• Violence causes more death and disability worldwide amongst women aged 15 – 44 than war, cancer, malaria or traffic accidents (Directorate of Public Health)

• One in 3 women worldwide have been beaten, coerced into sex or are abused in some other way

• In the former Yugoslavia 20,000 women were raped during the first months of the war (Physicians for Human Rights)

• Between 200, 000 – 300, 000 women are trafficked to Europe every year ( Human Rights Watch)

• Over $7billion a year is generated from sex trade trafficking (Peace Women)

• 2 million women in the USA are battered by their partners each year

• 75% of all Russian women suffer from some type of violence within the family.

• Every year 6,500 brides in India are murdered because their marriage dowries are considered inadequate

• 48 million women in Pakistan live under Karo-Kari law allowing them to be buried alive for refusing an arranged marriage.

• The 5 million women of Somalia are liable for public stoning for adultery

“It is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern conflict”(Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, 2008, former UN Peacekeeping Operation commander in DR Congo)

Wear Black wherever you are - 26th Nov

We're aiming to get as many people around the UK and beyond to wear black for a day as part of the '16 days against gender violence’, an international campaign that was started by the Centre for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) in 1991.

The 16 Days runs from 25th November - International Day Against Violence Against Women, to 10th December - International Human Rights Day to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasise that such violence is a violation of human rights.

Every Thursday people across the globe wear black as a personal and public protest against gender-based violence and inequality. It is a symbol of strength and remembrance, standing in solidarity with victims of violence and discrimination and demanding a fairer world for all.

Facts and stories will be appearing on this blog over the next few weeks.

Please take a photo of you and your friends and colleagues wearing black and send to thursdaysinblack@gmail.com or post to the Facebook group, event or this website!