Now I Understand

My parents are in the process of starting a business in Africa manufacturing and selling BUV's or Basic Utility vehicles. (Go to their website Sahel Auto for more info) My Dad has been to Africa twice my Mom has only gone once, but in their time there they have become enamored with the need to pull the entire continent out of the third world.

In their fund raising presentation that they give to potential investors there is a short segment on the plight of women in Africa. Focusing on the fact that women to an inordinate amount of the work particularly when it comes to hauling goods, water, firewood, etc. Now like most members of the Western World, this comes as no surprise. Everyone has seen the pictures in National Geographic or a program on Discovery with the native women carrying loads of goods on their heads. So we accept that this is just a strange, quaint, native custom. 

The reality is far from quaint. I lack the words to properly describe the injustice that these women have to suffer through. However this short (less than an hour) documentary A Walk To Beautiful - NOVA shows more than I can say. It is truly horrifying that this is the way women are treated. The most devastating part for me was a girl saying that unless she could be cured from her obstetric fistula she would kill herself before going home to be ostracized by her family. The sad thing was she wasn't threatening to kill herself for the attention or to make a scene, it was simply matter of fact. 

This leads me to one very angry comment: Feminists in America need to get a life. I know women still make less than men for the same job, and hot damn women has the word "men" in it. These social "injustices" should make no difference while there are women and girls (little girls, as young as 8) who are forced into fulfilling the role of Mother, sex toy, and workhorse and cast aside when any one of those duties cannot be met. I understand the desire to be equal. In my relationships with men I like being treated with as much equality as possible (unless there's something on a high shelf I can't reach or a jar that can't be opened). But why should we care about the little things when all over the world women don't even get the privilege to be second class citizens..