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A Challenge to Both Men and Women
On Saturday, my 14 year old daughter, Naomi and I joined a peace march
and rally in Glasgow, Scotland organized by a broad coalition of churches, trade unions, NGOs and social movements. The purpose of the march was to raise concerns about the ongoing human carnage in Iraq and to protest against the upgrading of Trident, the UK nuclear missile capability based in Scotland. In his speech, the leader of the Scottish Council of Churches asked a simple question: “What legitimacy have governments that are raising the biggest concerns about development of nuclear energy in Iran, if they themselves are brazenly going ahead to upgrade their nuclear weapons?” Other speakers asked why billions of dollars are spent seemingly overnight, while by comparison relatively small sums of money are offered to take action against poverty and inequality. Between banners and flags, I was struck by two women in their seventies carrying a small poster that read: No peace without gender equality. Another remarkable feature was the large number of women, both young and old, that were present in the march. This was a powerful reminder that we are on the eve of perhaps the most important day of global observance, International Women’s Day.
A feminist activist friend of mine once said: “Given that men have ruled the world for so long and have mainly given us war, conflict and injustice, it would be great to give women a chance. How much worse can they do?” At the time of the remark, the feminist activist friend was a young man in his late twenties working on the role of men in tackling gender based violence. A feminist man was an oddity then, but today it might just not be any less rare. This lack of male involvement is more than just unfortunate: it is blocking gender equality. One of the most important slogans to emerge from the feminist movement was: “The personal is political”. On that note, I would like to strongly encourage everyone to visit www.whiteband.org to see the suggestions GCAP’s Feminist task force has made for action. There you can find a wide range of actions you can do in your home, at your workplaces and in organisations that you are part of. My mother, who passed away when I was fifteen years old, used to say that it is more important to try and fail than to fail to try. Her relatively short life and experience, taught me that gender equality is a challenge to all men and women who want to create a just world. During the struggle against apartheid we learnt that white people will never be free until black people are free. Similarly, men will not enjoy full freedom if women do not enjoy full gender equality.
Published: April 03, 2007
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