Born to Die

It is no secret in third world countries that women are at a disadvantage starting from the day they are born. They are are inferior in many societies. Parents that live in the realities of a second class female world know what struggles and unfair social structures lay ahead of their daughters, and they take the most drastic measures possible because of it.

As children, women are fed less, denied education, and refused medical care. When they grow to be a teenager, they could be forced into marriage or sold into prostitution and labor. If they do make it to adulthood with minimal actions taken against them, they will be treated as less than farm animals and forced to have children.

This is not the life a parent would want for their child. After birth there is a decision to be made, and it is often the hardest decision a parent could ever make. In these third world countries, families turn to infanticide. They kill their baby solely based on the fact that it is a female.  

However, killing their child because of the life they do not want it to live is the surface reason that looks good on paper. In reality, the truth of these baby killings is much more sickening. People would rather have one thousand sons than one single daughter. Sons can carry on the family name. Sons have the ability to bring in family income. Sons do not cost too much money. Sons can take care of their parents in old age. Parents kill their daughters because it is easier to do that than to raise them. They do not want the burden of a daughter.  

Yet this epidemic of murdering female newborns is not only affecting the population rates of men versus women. In China there is a major disproportion of single young men and single young women. The one child policy in this country has caused a need for sons and a distaste for daughters. Girls can be given away to orphanages and put up for adoption or just eliminated by abortion the minute the parents find out they are expecting one. After decades of this one child law being in effect, the problems are finally settling in. Men need wives, but the lack of women around is making their search extremely hard. So, they turn to other options. One of these growing options is slave trade. Women are being taken from outlying regions of China and countries just outside the borders. These women are being pulled from their lives and forced to be wives to men they do not know. The demand needs to be met and the supply is unsuspecting, undereducated women.

Gender based infanticide is a method that is keeping women from reaching equality in the world. It keeps a culture stigma in which sons are idolized and daughters are considered close to less than human. If families keep believing that a daughter is a burden not worth having, then a world with female equality and power is one we will never see.  

*Here is a video about infanticide and the fight against it in India. It follows the lives of real women as they go through the struggles of raising and losing their daughters.

I Am Malala

On October 9th, 2012, one gunman walked onto a school bus full of kids demanding to know the identity of one girl. For months this girl, and most of her friends, knew she had a death threat put against her by the Taliban, but this did not stop the other children on the bus from looked at her, giving her location away to the gunman. Twenty seconds later the gunman shot her in the side of the head.

This girl is Malala Yousafzai and at fourteen years old she almost had her life taken away by a terrorist group because she was advocating for female education. After barely surviving the attack, she was taken from Mingora, Pakistan, her hometown, to Birmingham, England, for the treatment that would eventually save her life. Now, almost three years later, Malala has a Nobel Peace Prize and is on the forefront of women’s rights in the middle east.   

Mingora, Pakistan had been a tourist attraction known for it’s summer festivals before the taliban started to take control of the country. Her family had roots in the town, since her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai had founded the school in the area. Malala attended that school up until the day she was shot. As the Taliban started to gain more power, they began attacking girls’ schools. This led Malala to giver her first speech. It was given in September of 2008,when she was only 11 years old  and it was titled, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” This was only the tip of the iceberg for this brave girl.

In 2009, she began blogging for the BBC about the Taliban and living under their threats to deny females education. She used the pen name Gul Makai do avoid detection, but was given away in December of that year. Even though she did not want this, it helped her grow her platform and spread her message. She continued to speak out and fight for what she believed it. This led her to be nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011, be awarded the Pakistan National Youth Peace Prize, but also a death threat from the Taliban. A group of grown terrorists had become threatened by a fourteen year old girl.  

After the shooting on the bus, Malala managed to survive and continue her fight for education. In 2013 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but did not win it until the next year when she was nominated again. At seventeen, she became the youngest girl to win the award. In October of 2013, she also released an autobiography called, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. She wrote about her life’s story and explained the importance of education to women in our changing world.   

Malala has become the voice of thousands. She speaks for every girl who has lost her right to an education and, subsequently, a future. She is fearless and strong and will stop at nothing to achieve what she deserves. It is people like Malala Yousafzai that keeps the feminist movement alive.

*Malala's powerful acceptance speech for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize*

Not Just Women's Rights

There are times when the idea of women's rights crosses over into plain old human rights. The subject of child marriage is one of these ideas. Child marriage is defined as a marriage, normally forced, between two people with at least one of them being under the age of 18. It is considered a world wide problem. Although it does affect boys and girls, it is mostly girls who are married underage and that makes it a women's rights issue.

Over 700 million women alive right now were married as children. It normally takes place in developing countries in places like Africa, South America and East Asia. In fact, 1 in ever 3 girls in these developing countries will be married before 18 and 1 in 9 will be married before 15. As of 2012, Niger leads the child marriage numbers with 76% of it's females being subject to it. By the end of the decade as many as 142 million girls will be married as children. 

This phenomenon takes place because of four factors. The first is tradition. Child marriage has been taking place for generations on generations. Swaying from the culture norm could be scrutiny and exclusion in the community. Another factor is gender roles. In many cultures that this takes place in, girls are seen as less than their boy counterparts. They are valued at less, which means they can be seen as a burden. To get rid of this burden, parents may marry their daughter off young. The third factor is poverty. Having little to no money is a big incentive to marry a daughter off. It would give her family one less mouth to feed and lessen the expenses. Also, families could be given a dowry for the marriage to help with their financial state. The last factor is security. It is unlike all of the others because the family does it to help their child instead of themselves. With marrying their child off, they can somewhat ensure that she will no longer be at risk for physical or sexual abuse. Many of these parents can have false hope for this, but it is all they have.    

Child marriage becomes a feminism problem along with a human rights problem because it hinders the development of women. Marrying this young can have an impact of the girl's health, education, safety, and poverty. When it comes to health, a leading causes of death among 15-19 year olds are pregnancy complications and birth. In fact, girls under 15 are five times more likely to die during child birth than woman aged 20-25. Being married as a child also increases their chances of contracting HIV and, later, AIDS. Child marriage ends any opportunity for an education. These opportunities are already low in developing countries, but being married young makes them even smaller.Many married girls have little to no formal education and can be illiterate. A lack of education leads to poverty, because they cannot bring in any sort of income or have any valuable skills. In the event that the marriage does end, the girl will not be able to support herself or her family. Another problem with child marriage is domestic violence. Being forced into a marriage puts girls at a much higher risk for sexual and physical abuse. They are likely to be beaten and forced into sexual intercourse. 

Programs like Unicef and GirlsNotBrides are working to end this world wide culture norm. They are trying to do this through education, empowerment, and attempting to change tradition. Bringing men into the conversation has helped to keep the movement running. Another way to stop the marriage is to employ laws in this developing countries, which is being worked on in many. 

Ending child marriage would be just another step towards closing the world wide gender gap. It would increase the amount of women being educated and create a healthier environment for everyone to live in.

       

*Infographic on the impacts of child marriage by GirlsNotBrides

Here is a ling to a video emphasizing the impacts of child marriage.