Rebecca West once said, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” All over the world women are treated poorly and oppressed, but thank God that in the United States feminism is a very real and active fight. Of course, there are some people lagging behind who believe women have specific and exclusive roles, such as being a wife and mother, rather than a choice in how to lead their own lives. I am proud to say that there is outrage when we hear about the injustices that women incur, and that it is in the forefront, rather than played down or swept under the rug by a society that does not want to deal with it. I do believe that a great many women do not realize the extent of their freedoms or the lack of freedom that women around the world live with in their daily lives.
Women specifically in the Middle East are met with an immense amount of oppression. The novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, follows the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila, and depicts the trials that they face daily. The ladies are forced to live and abide by their husband's will, or face the consequences. They are not able to go to the market without the escort of their husband, or a burqa which is not only uncomfortable and inconvenient, but a hazard to their health. They are forced to endure the routine rape that their husband inficts upon them, and they must do all these things without protest. When they attempt to run away and are caught they are tortured almost to the point of death by their husband, not that anything would be done if he saw that to be a fit punishment for them.
This story may be fictional, but it is based off of the sufferings that so many women have met over the years, and continue to face today. There are women who are forced into arranged marriages in which they are pledged to unquestionable submission to their husbands, where they are literally made to be possessions. Married off far to young and left for dead after their husband, who is unspeakably older, has had his way with them. Acid and boiling water are thrown in the faces of women and children who seek education, or do not fit the prescribed norms. The name Malala Yousafzai comes to mind, a young girl who spoke against the Taliban's forbiddance of girls going to school. Her consequence was being shot in the head, but she miraculously lives to tell the story as a spokesperson for her cause.
Yes, in the United States there is still some societal issues that remain intact when it comes to women's issues. However, there is an overall freedom that women retain in our country that is an undeniable luxury, not that it should be. On that note it is appalling to me how easily we turn a blind eye to the chronic struggles that women in other countries must endure. There is so much that we can do to not only help them, but learn from them, and yet we chose not to. We should be looking to them to see how blessed we are as a people to live in a country where we feel at least some semblance of safety, but we choose not to because that would be unpleasant. There are basic human rights that everyone is entitled to, and it cannot be ignored when masses of people are being robbed of them. We cannot turn a blind eye to these struggles because it could just as easily have been us in that situation.
Good Braise
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