Women’s Work
is never done!
The 2018 midterm election was unprecedented for American women in positions of political power. Today, 127 women (105D, 22R) hold seats in the United States Congress: 26 women (26%) serve in the U.S. Senate, and 101 women (23.2%) serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Additionally, 48 of the 127 females serving in Congress are women of color: 22 are Black, 13 Latina, 8 Asian American/Pacific Islander, 2 Native American, 2 Middle Eastern/North African, and 1 multiracial.
The influence inherent in this diverse female block is worthy of fist bumps. But compared to many other nations, we still have a long ways to go: the U.S. ranks 75th out of 193 countries in terms of women’s representation in government.
It’s also worth noting that the Democratic Party had a number of competent women running for president this election year, yet ended up with a 78-year-old white male. As has been true for a long time, when it comes to empowering women, we take one step forward and two steps back!
Who cares?
My fear in writing about women’s rights is that most of us are numb to the subject. We’re tired of talking about women’s roles or the plight of women in culture or anything else connected to gender. And God knows we don’t want to talk about a woman’s place in the church.
Frankly, neither do I, at least not today. There are bigger fish to fry.
Here’s a whale
How many women and girls around the world are murdered in a gender-related killing in a single day? Four female reporters for the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) were motivated to answer that very question.
After weeks of research focused on the events of a single day, these four investigators found reports of 47 gender-related murders of women and girls. That’s right, only 47. Astoundingly good news, yes? Out of 7.6 billion people, only 47 girls and women were reported murdered in a gender-related incident in a single day.
The rest of the story
So, where did the germ for this BBC project originate? A 34-year-old Iranian woman was the catalyst that drove the BBC reporters to action. Maryam (a pseudonym based on the Muslim prophetess Miriam) is a survivor of an abusive husband. After one of his beatings put her in the hospital, she obtained a divorce, not an easy thing to do for a woman in Iran. Maryam airs a weekly podcast that enables women and girls to detail individual accounts of violence endured from husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, etc., etc., etc.
These stories are shining a light on the darkness of violence against women and girls, not just in Iran, but in much of the Muslim world. Maryam’s bravery came to the attention of the BBC 100 Women team, a group that finds and lifts up women like Maryam. This team had a bold idea: Could the BBC find every report of a woman who died in a gender-related killing on one day across the world’s media?
The above-mentioned four reporters believed they could accomplish this task. After all, they were the BBC, with 80+ years of experience and connectedness in the world. Their network reaches 150 countries, representing 100 languages, thereby giving them access to massive amounts of information.
So they arbitrarily selected October 1, 2018 as the day to collect the stories.
The sad story
Remember, at the heart of this project the BBC team was trying to answer a simple question: How many women and girls were killed on one day? They found reports of 47.
But the sad story within the story is this: Relative Silence. Gender-related killings of women and girls were happening all around the world, but hardly anyone was talking about it—not the local press, not the local police, not the local church or synagogue or mosque. Why not?
Not just in the Muslim world
For generations in both the United States and Canada, Indigenous women, children, two-spirit, and transgender folks have been targeted by human traffickers, oil extraction workers, serial killers, abusers and a host of others (67% non-native men). All too often, when these women and girls go missing, they also go missing in the news.
The sad truth is that because these tragedies are happening to marginalized women and girls, we hear little about it. Thankfully, the silence is slowly being broken.
On May 5, 2019, communities across the U.S. held gatherings in acknowledgement of a newly designated National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls. Roxanne White led a march of tribal members dressed in red through the Yakama reservation town of Toppenish, Washington. She asked marchers for the names of women and girls who were gone. “I had so many people telling me this name, this name, all at once,” White said. White estimates she called out 30 names.
“We’re the only ones that are going to speak for them. It’s not going to be the president or the governor,” White said. “We have to be the ones to come out and demand justice, demand the police, when somebody goes missing, to do their damn job, hold them accountable.”
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Maryam Azwer of the BBC drew much of the final data together:
“This is as much about the deaths that aren’t reported, as those that are. Those whose stories never reached the media, that went unreported, were unverified, or were not or could not be investigated.
It makes you wonder: what does it take to make a woman’s killing important enough to be reported?”
Here in America we’re numb to the issue of women’s rights. Most of us have the luxury of looking the other way, of being tired of the subject. Even more frightening to me is the thought that we believe this matter of violence against women, and therefore the larger matter of women’s rights, is not our problem, or maybe even, not a problem.
After all, we don’t hear the screams. Makes you wonder though, doesn’t it? Could you make a difference?