Females in Fear

by: Andrea Inman

“People use bad words for girls. They scream at them on the streets. When I see that, I don’t want to be a girl.

 When I am a boy, they don’t speak to me like that.”  -Zahra

Diversity:

     Many teenagers have a normal high school and college experience. They mingle with different races, religions, and cultures. Diversity is essential to a working school, community, and on a larger scale economy; diversity meaning variety. When educational facilities, governments and nations focus on diversity, they focus more on mixing different ethinicities more so over the mixing of sexes. But, that is what should be of utmost important. Because there are diversity issues between the sexes.

The Problem:

We all have heard stories. Stories of women being beaten, raped and murdered by spouses or strangers. The statistics are shockingly high, with 1 in 4 women experiencing domestic violence and 3 in 4 women reporting rape or sexual assualt (DVRC) - and that's just in America. Women and little girls should not live in fear of what boys and men will do to them. Females are people too, and as such, should be treated properly. In Shiva's "Earth Democracy", she speaks on how globalization affects the views on women and how women should be viewed instead.

Globalization and Crimes Against Women

As Shiva explains, sexual exploitation of women is global. It's not just in the third world countries, it's in America. It's everywhere. Women are seen as disposable. As something, instead of someone. Horrendously, there is a thriving industry based around the sexual exploitation of women. There are two, more popular, ways of violence against women: sex trafficking and valuing boys higher than girls. 

 "Violence against women in any form is a crime, whether the abuser is a family member; someone you date; a current or past spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend; an acquaintance; or a stranger." (Womanshealth.gov)

Sex Trafficking:

“Sexual Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation (within national or across international borders),transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation.  Sexual trafficking is accomplished by means of fraud, deception, threat of or use of force, abuse of a position of vulnerability, and other forms of coercion."-U.N. Definition

Surprisingly, most often times women get stuck in prostitution because their friends refer them to an agency. And it goes so deep, it even reaches the bloodline. Mothers and sisters recruiting daughters and siblings. What a catastrophe! How could you want that life for anyone else? To have men use you for sexual pleasure and treat you as an object, as if you hold no emotions or desires. In my research, I discovered the number one reason women enter this business is because of poverty. Villages in Moldova don't have positions open for young women, and so their choices are either to leave and risk being trafficked, or commit crimes.

This all sounds like something that would happen in third world countries, right?

Wrong.

America and Sex Trafficking:

"An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 women and children are trafficked into this country each year." - IAST

     The United States is not a bystander in this industry of sexual exploitation. In fact, trafficking has been reported in about 20 states; Florida is one of the states with the most cases (IAST). For example, Marvin Hersh, a Florida Atlantic University professor, was charged with alien smuggling and passport fraud for going to Honduras and bringing a teen-age boy back to Boca Raton, Florida for sex".

   In January 2008, Shared Hope International conducted a comprehensive assessment of domestic minor sex trafficking in Clearwater, Florida. Their key findings were as follows:

“In the Clearwater/Tampa Bay area, domestic minor sex trafficking victims are rarely identified and often misidentified. There is an acute lack of awareness about the crime of domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST), and professionals seldom identify its victims.”

     Shiva argues that the sex trafficking industry devalues women and women's rights, and, along with other policies, are rendering women useless.

The most cases of sex trafficking in the United States occur in New York, California, And Florida.

Consequences of Sex Trafficking: 

     Sex trafficking can lead to teen pregnancy, Sexually transmitted infections, and drug or alcohol abuse along with depression, insomnia, and post-traumatic stress disorder (The Advocates for Human Rights).

The Problem is that women who escape this horrendous life often have no place to go afterward. There are few shelters where they can stay, and the lists to stay are long. Most victims do not have good credit, money, or financial stability to rent an apartment or house. There have been efforts to give these survivors a place to live, in refugee camps, but most were not securely implemented.  "Research among refugees living in camps in Dadaab, Kenya, undertaken almost 10 years ago, found that

 more than 90 percent of reported rapes occurred under these circumstances."

But it's more than just sex trafficking; some cultures firmly believe boys are more valuable than girls. 

The Value of Men:

In many cultures, males are the only ones who can inherit wealth, and families without a son are pitied and looked down upon. So, in response, many families dress their girls up as boys when they are children...there is even a word for this practice, "bacha posh" - it means "dressed up as a boy" (New York Times). Mrs. Rafaat, an Afghan woman who works in parliament, has dressed her youngest daughter to be like a boy after giving birth to three other girls.

She is not the only case, a ten year old girl, Miina, goes to school as a girl and then when she gets home, Miina changes into a boys outfit and goes to work to help support her 8 sisters, her mother, and her drug-addicted father.

“People use bad words for girls. They scream at them on the streets. When I see that, I don’t want to be a girl. When I am a boy, they don’t speak to me like that.” 15 year old Zahra said. Zahra has been dressing up as a boy for as long as she can remember, and she has no intention of ever going back to being a woman (NYT).

Zoom over to China and India, and the views are still the same. Here, it is predicted that there will be up to 30-40 million more men than women by the year 2020. This is due to abortions and infantcide and since there will be a growing number of men making up these countries population, there will be less woman to give birth; thus, the birth rate will drop significantly.

In China, there is a "one-baby rule", where women are only allowed one baby. Before abortions were available, many baby girls were abandoned. But now with this new technology, pregnant women are having abortions until they have a baby boy. Boys are preferred in China for much of the same reasons they are preferred in Afghanastan - to carry on the name, lead ancestor worship, and provide labor.

Outside of Asia, the bias against women are not really there. "Studies show the birth sex ratio of males to females fell in North America and Europe during the latter half of the 20th century, although it was not significantly skewed to begin with. South American countries do not have widespread prenatal sex selection because of Catholic beliefs," (Scientific America).

How do We Solve This?

According to Vandana Shiva, all we need to fix the way cultures around the world view women, is to base culture on life:

"Living cultures are cultures of life, based on reverence for all life - women and men, rich and poor, white and black, Christian and Muslim, human and nonhuman.

     Reverence for life is based on compassion and caring for the other, recognition of the autonomy and subjecthood of the other, and the awareness that we are mutually dependent on each other for sustenance, for peace, for joy" (Shiva 142). 

In other words, all we need to do is teach our children and grandchildern to respect the different abilities and perspectives of each culture, and use it to the world's advantage. By allowing the Chinese to do what the Chinese do best, and the Muslims to do what they do best; to allow women the same rights as men, and to let men know it's alright to do womanly chores; To give love, and respect, the world will ultimately balance out and create Earth Democracy.