We’re kicking off todays events with a little Respect from Aretha Franklin.
The UN designated today as International Day of Rural Women (IDRW), which is very much linked in certain respects to the International Women’s Day held each year in March. The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has this to say about the vision of the UNs project.
“Empowering rural women is crucial for ending hunger and poverty. By denying women rights and opportunities, we deny their children and societies a better future. This is why the United Nations recently launched a programme to empower rural women and enhance food security.”
The IDRW isn’t alone a human rights issue. Women in the western world today have – to degree, equal rights and protection purely because of feminist ideology. Recordings as far back as the Béquines – a small society of celibate laywomen, opposed to male subjection of women, attempted to live in their own communities and support themselves by their collective work during the 13th century.
In many parts of the third and fourth world regions, the most basic human rights for women – namely, to exist without fear of being killed by men, are still having to be fought for by those indigenous women. These women play the most important roles in the economy of their country, providing for their children, their education and their society in farming the land and finding irrigation solutions. And they constantly come up against violence, abuse, inequality either through default of their religion or indifference to their rights to equality in patriarchal societies.
Film Tip
The French/Afghan writer and film maker Atiq Rahimi wrote and directed the film The Patience Stone (2012) set during the Afghan war about a young woman’s burden of sexism and inequality. The film doesn’t handle or provide a solution but it posters the problems women have in surviving in their environment in this region of the world.
Links
Interesting reading, feeds and short films about the various projects with women in rural regions of the world on the UN website:
http://www.un.org/en/events/ruralwomenday/
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