With self-belief, women can change the world

Women were told stories as they breakfasted at Brisbane Convention Centre last Thursday (March 4, 2010) to celebrate International Women’s Day. And women around Australia attended other celebratory events to hear about the situation of women, good and bad, worldwide. Some of the stories they heard were enough to put them off their breakfast.

Tako Ndiayeis, of the African Section, UNIFEM New York, speaking in Brisbane, described the ways in which UNIFEM works to support women in Africa and Asia and why. UNIFEM stands for the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

She said the picture of many women in Africa toiling up and down hills every day carrying heavy and bulky loads of wood in order to provide their families with food and income was appalling. Harsh conditions and heavy weights, however, were only a part of it.

A particular story from the Congo she relates sets the scene: In one family the father asks the woman to fetch the wood because rebels might catch and kill him, but, if she got caught, he says, they would rape her.

“Maybe you should go,” the woman tells their daughter. “You can run faster and may be able to escape.”

The effects of poverty were multi-dimensional, Tako Ndiayeis said. Women had no voice. Power was with husbands and though a woman could attend training sessions, yet she could go home and be beaten every day.

However, UNIFEM studies have discovered that many women in Africa have become self-made cross-border traders and as such, are local entrepreneurs providing income for their families and working to get out of poverty.

Some earn enough to pay for food, television, rent, school fees, health care or building a house. But these women traders remained “invisible” because no statistics have been collected about them and therefore they are not counted or looked after, Ms Ndiayeis said. It is estimated that there are about 2,000 women who are cross-border traders in Africa.

The cross border traders earn a profit from the difference between costs, incorporating currency exchange, between countries. They have to negotiate customs, police and check points. Sometimes they avoid paying taxes by prostitution; sometimes their goods are confiscated. Exploitation can occur because they do not know necessary information even when, in some cases, there is no need to pay any taxes. Sometimes they are beaten or raped; yet their contribution to the economy is huge, she said.

UNIFEM backs cross-border trading and is working to support traders - trying to make sure they are properly informed and made “visible” by collecting statistics, so that they are no longer regarded as smugglers or prostitutes. The women carry loads either on their heads or backs. Women usually deal in textiles and agricultural produce, including cassava, while men mostly deal in watches and radios.

Current hardships and situations, which can also deny girls the chance to get an education, have become a public health issue, she said. It has been estimated that the energy used by women in Africa to fetch 40 billion packets of water each year is equivalent to the energy consumption of the entire population of France. This gave the women no time to rest, improve their skills, get an education, have any leisure or spend time with the family.

Tako Ndiayeis dedicated her talk as a tribute to women in developing countries who every day struggle to get food, water and fire wood to support their families and communities, and who are, she said, “surviving one day to the next”.

Until women and girls were liberated from poverty and injustice, “all our goals - peace, security, sustainable development - stand in jeopardy,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week as the United Nations marked International Women’s Day, usually observed on March 8.

There were signs of progress, he said, but as a son, husband, father and grandfather to girls, for him women’s empowerment was a priority. Injustice and discrimination against women persisted around the world, sometimes violently. “We sometimes hear it said that such practices are a matter of culture,” he said, “they are not”.

In contrast, three stories of inspiring women whose efforts have made a big difference to women in situations of great disadvantage were related by businesswoman Therese Rein. Ms Rein is the wife of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Therese Rein first praised the work of Australian Dr Catherine Hamlin, obstetrician and gynaecologist, and co-founder of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, which she and her late husband, Dr Reginald Hamlin founded in 1974. Dr Hamlin, now in her 90s, continues her work there. Fistula problems make women outcasts because families and communities will not put up with the odour they exude until they receive treatment. The hospital now handles 9,000 cases a year and the number waiting for treatment was triple that number, she said.

The Ethiopian hospital is the world's only medical centre dedicated exclusively to providing free fistula repair surgery to poor women suffering from childbirth injuries. Dr Hamlin has been recognised by the UN Fund for Population Activities as a pioneer in fistula surgery for her development of techniques and procedures for obstetric fistula treatment.

Therese Rein also spoke of the achievements of another Australian woman, Gemma Sisia, from a New South Wales sheep farming family, who in northern Tanzania has set up St Jude’s School which educates the brightest child of a poor family. Gemma Sisia’s ambition is to encourage as many children as possible to go on to university, with the possibility of them becoming future leaders.

As a youngster she wanted to work as a volunteer in Africa, so she trained as a teacher and taught for two years in Uganda as a volunteer, the Australian Women’s History Forum states. There she met her future husband, Richard Sisia, a Tanzanian safari driver. Richard Sisia’s father, chairman of a village near Arusha City, offered her some land on which to build a school. After seeking donations of pens, paper and books and money for bricks and cement to build her school, she organised a succession of volunteer teams from Australia to come and construct the first two school blocks. St Jude's (named after the patron saint of hopeless causes) opened in 2002, with an 18-year-old volunteer teacher from Sydney and three pupils. The school now has over 1,000 students and has one of the best academic records in the country.

Gemma Sisia’s slogan is simple but effective: “Fight poverty through education”. Her school is for the very poorest children, the ones whose families cannot afford clothes or books or even pencils, and who otherwise would remain trapped by poor education, illiteracy and poverty.

Therese Rein also praised the work of a woman doctor, Dr Kiran Martin, in New Delhi, India, who originally went Delhi’s slums to help fight a major cholera outbreak. She began treating patients on a borrowed table, standing among rubbish and sewage, after negotiating permission to treat them with the slum landlord. Later she was able to persuade local politicians to put in wells and community toilets.

Indian newspaper LOK News reports that ASHA is an organisation founded by Dr Martin, who graduated in Delhi in 1985, with a post graduate degree in paediatrics. Asha for Education says it is “a secular organisation dedicated to change in India by focusing on basic education in the belief that education is a critical requisite for socio-economic change”.

The cholera outbreak convinced Kiran Martin to continue to volunteer her services to help treat people in the slums. Since then she has created a community health and development society that has transformed the lives of more than 300,000 slum dwellers. In 2002, the president of India presented Dr Martin with the Padma Shri - India's second highest civilian award - in recognition of her remarkable achievements in the field of social work.

“What these women have in common, I think, is that they saw a need; they asked themselves ‘What can I do?’ They took responsibility, they took action: women inspiring and enabling and empowering other women out of poverty through education, through maternal health, through employment, through advocacy,” Therese Rein said.

“They demonstrate that, as we all know, women can be a potent force for change. They demonstrate that women have courage; they demonstrate that women have determination and persistence to see things through year after year; they demonstrate that women are practical and compassionate, and that women can inspire other women - they inspired me when I met them. I think they also show that if we do a powerful amount of believing in ourselves and in each other, we can change the world.”