Women's Crossroads

Just a quick birthday post before I run off to work, to thank Bob Herbert of the NY Times for sending out a cry for help on behalf of the world's women in his column today! I couldn't ask for a better birthday gift. Even though it's such grim news he's spreading, it's news that needs a wider audience, and what better pulpit than the op-ed pages of the NY Times?

Herbert is responding to a recent U.N. report on the "permanent world war" being waged against women all over the planet. He gives examples, familiar to those of us who follow international women's issues: sexual trafficking, honor killings, wife abuse, female genital mutilation of girls, systematic rape as a weapon of war or ethnic cleansing, infanticide of girls...the list goes on and on and on.

And the abuse is by no means limited to Third World nations--those "savage" countries! Herbert tells us that "The most common form of serious abuse against women and girls around the globe is violence by intimate partners. Huge percentages of female murder victims, even in such developed countries as Australia, Canada, Israel and the United States, are killed by current or former husbands or boyfriends."

Indeed, he continues, "A study of young, female murder victims in the U.S. found that homicide was the second leading cause of death for girls 15 to 18, and that 78 percent of all the homicide victims in the study had been killed by an acquaintance or intimate partner."

Women are targeted because they're women, and they're targeted in all kinds of ways--from the subtle forms of fashion and beauty standards that lead to anorexia and other self-dstructive behaviors, to the more open treatment of women as property, to be abused at will in many places in the world.

Herbert is right to call this a World War, and to demand that those sitting safe on the sidelines--readers of the New York Times, for example--take note and take action.

What can you do? Support the work of the United Nations on behalf of the world's women, for one thing: make a donation to UNIFEM or the UNFPA. Get involved in your own community, working on behalf of local women. Celebrate International Women's Day with a big event or an intimate women's circle!

The first step toward action is simply becoming aware, and letting your compassion and concern resonate until it finds the appropriate channel for you to act. It's never too late to start, and nothing is too little a step to help the women and girls of the world put this war behind us and move on into a peaceful, prosperous, equitable future.