Week 11: Continued Talk On Aid

While taking a look at the Grameen Foundation, I noticed the impact and models used in various South Saharan Africa. In Kenya, they are using mobile technology to improve entree to financial services and gather more information on agriculture. They are also developing a mobile-based system to give information to help farmers properly store their crops after the harvest, and link them to financial services and markets for final sale. The Grameen Foundation also works with Musoni Kenya, which is a microfinance institution that provides fully automated mobile phone-based banking services. This is a great way to help expand its services to rural areas. In Ghana, The Grameen Foundation has been working together with Ghana Health Service to improve maternal and neonatal care in rural communities. They have been doing this by using Mobile Technology for Community Health Initiative. MOTECH has helped with developing mobile applications that provide education on sexual reproductive health to the younger population and information on farming tips and techniques. It also gives information on weather reports to farmers. Grameen Foundation has also relased an innovative version for microfinance. Its purpose is to microfinance institutions as a cloud service or on-premise system. It will allow for deeper socio-economic data and enhance operational efficiency with the M-PESA, which is Kenya’s mobile money service.

            KIVA is also a non-profit organization that helps leverage microfinance institutions in various countries. They provide in Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Togo, Mali, Tanzania, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, and other countries in SSA. How it works is the user choses a borrower after reading different stories of people looking for loans, and then the user makes a loan to the borrower of choice, which is disbursed by their field partners who work closely with the borrower. The user gets many updates on the borrowers and repays their loans.

            KIVA and the Grameen Foundation focus on microfinancing, while Moyo on the other hand believes in microfinancing but also allowing the country to fix itself by being self-reliant. In Chapter 10, Moyo talks about three interlinked stages that outline the path to help poor countries. The first stage is to slowly decrease aid causing the countries to work on strengthening their economy on their own. The second stage is to have a balance between capital and competition. Without balance, everything can be thrown off and aid is abused. The third stage is this plan is for a stable government. This is a way to put an end to this issue for the long-term rather than short. Moyo and Sachs both have different views on the topic. Sachs believes aid is good and necessary while Moyo thinks it’s a band-aid and is not bettering the situation. Each side has its points and flaws.

Moyo is not the only one that has an issue with foreign aid. Herman Chinery-Hesse, an entrepreneur in Ghana has issues with aid. There are times when he is making a business deal and NGO’s find out about it and send aid money so with his investments he has to lay off his staff. He states how he has never heard of any country that has been developed due to foreigners coming in and trying to develop its country. Andrew Mwenda, a journalist also believes aid is not a good idea. HE thinks aid makes objects of the poor. People in these countries become passive recipients of charity rather than trying to be active and help out their own economy. There have been multiple people from this country with the same thoughts. When it comes down to it, the only way to find out if this works is by taking action and trying to slowly decrease aid. If we never try, we will never know if it works.

Week 14 Equal Rights Within Africa

There have been a few policies that have helped to make a difference for women in Africa. In Nations such as Rwanda and Tanzania have created a constitutional requirement that the government must hold a certain number of women. This has helped because it demonstrates that societies are changing. It is an example that women can create their own life. Even though in some countries women are equal to men by law, it is still common for decisions to be made by males. Many women still are looked upon as different and do the traditional duties like taking care of the home. Since women stay at home, they are more prone to disease such as AIDs and Ebola. They are the primary victims and tend to die from these diseases because they have no one to take care of them. To create more sustainable gender equality, the government should fund more women in creating businesses and education. By implementing these practices, it will allow their societies to flourish and show that women are just as hardworking and smart as men. Education is key for Africa and government should place more funding for their girls. By proving women have a place in the workforce, both men and women will start to become more equal.

Women face many challenges and constraints in developing their full economic potential. Many men do not see women as equals and believe they must stay at home and raise the children. With these ideas about women, many are not able to find the resources to learn how to read and become educated. After watching the video on Women Entrepreneurs Project, women can benefit their societies greatly when understanding they can make economic growth themselves. These women created a restaurant through IEEWEP with funding by ExxonMobil. They are bringing radical change to their children and families. After the plan was approved, the women were given training and now the restaurant is thriving. The African Well Fund provided these ladies with a well in order to serve and sell water.   The women use this profit for educational and food purposes. Many have also set up emergency funds in case there are health issues that arise in their family. Opening new agricultural centers has also allowed these women to process cereals to sell. They take note of what’s the most in demand and alter what they create/sell. With extra income these women are able to provide for their children and expand into other locations. They buy goats to breed and sell. They continue to invest the money they receive into other businesses. Human capital is the first ingredient in development and using these women is helping the economy tremendously. When women help out, society’s economy grows faster compared to only men working.

Women and the Workforce (Week 14)

In circles of academia, it’s no small secret women find themselves in positions of gross disadvantage, particularly as it concerns economic opportunity; a fact by no means limited to Sub-Saharan African, and on the contrary, is a veritably global issue. That being said, it’s fair to say that systemic sexism dons much less of a mask in Sub Saharan Africa, galavanting it’s heinous character on full display via means of cultural practices and a difficult, trying history.

Sexism (or for anything to exist as an “-ism”) requires establishment on the internal, interpersonal, and structural level (this is why “reverse racism” or “reverse sexism” don’t necessarily exist; examples of the aforementioned are unilaterally on the interpersonal level, and don’t exist structurally, and rarely internally). Efforts to challenge internal sexism are limited even in the developed west, with higher education (for example, Women and Gender Studies Courses), bystander intervention training, and leadership development work being the primary means of bringing awareness to acknowledgment about internalized sexist values. Naturally, this is arguably not on the development radar of SSA countries, as numerous principalities of development must exist before the aforementioned means of internal rehabilitation can even be considered. As far as efforts to impede the further development of interpersonal and structural sexism, as well as their possible dismantlement, governments, NGO’s, and activists often push for legislation or policy oriented change.

(source: http://www.world-trust.org)

Before providing specific policy and offering analysis, I’d like to propose a somewhat interesting question; since academics and scholars generally agree that sexism operates on three distinct levels, one wonders if it’s sensible to dismantle the system without efforts aimed at internal change, the primary level. If you’re privy to the idea that “the environment creates the person” (as opposed to people’s values and attitudes being independent of their ecosystem), then policy may be a somewhat flawed strategy of change; sure, you can tell the perpetrator they’ll be handled punitively by a criminal justice system, but will that genuinely dissuade said person from committing acts of violence when the enforcers of policy don’t have the power or integrity to pursue charges? When bystanders would rather be in their iotas of comfort, than directly confront instances of injustice? The country of India is getting quite the name for itself due to gang rapes that occur within the network of their public transportation system; gang rape is illegal in India. What structural or interpersonal policy would prevent this from happening when there’s no cultural predicate to see policy enforced?

(Should it be worth mentioning, my personal argument is that internal policy should exist; for example, the mass training or education of men in bystander intervention or relationship and sexual violence prevention would help amend values young boys are taught from the minute they’re born).

(source: http://www.slate.com)

I digress; an entity known for being charged with enacting change on the policy level is the UN General Assembly, whose governing body in 1979 adopted “The Bill of Rights for Women,” spearheaded by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination. Their intents are holistically on the structural level, with their primary focus being the abolishment of sex-discriminating laws and the establishing of public institutions to prevent sexist laws prior to their inception. Again, my primary contention lies in the level of focus; the aforementioned treatises address purely structural concerns, and ignore cultural barriers and existing internalized iterations of sexism. While these policies, if executed effectively, may tease out internalized values in a very long span of time – say, 15 to 20 generations – there’s no immediate addressment of culture. In that vein, I propose widespread, intensive, mandated education of persons to reframe ecosystems, therein shifting internal values, which in turn amends interpersonal sexism and eventually, structural sexism. In other words, I would prefer a bottom up approach, as opposed to what is essentially neoliberal trickle-down advocacy.

(source: http://www.pbs.twimg.com)

Challenges women face in developing their full economic potential exist on all levels of the patriarchal spectrum. For example, say you want to send your children to a good school; this school is, in accordance with the quality of it’s education, expensive. You have 3 children; 2 sons and 1 daughter, and you only have resources to send 2/3rds of them to school. In a society that values men and affords them more opportunity, you’d naturally make the utilitarian decision and send your son(s) to school before your daughter, as the net yield for your family would be higher; this leads to further domestication of women.

However, say your daughter actually makes it to school; in that system exists pressures as well, like filling “pink collar” jobs, being encouraged to stay away from STEM fields due to preconceptions, and in general being preferenced less than male counterparts. In Sub Saharan Africa, there are unique pressures of an early marriage, tending to domestic needs under more pernicious gender norms, and the presences of practices that lead to stagnated health (for example, FGM).

(Here’s an interesting riddle for you: a father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that boy is my son!” Explain.

The answer is that the surgeon is the boy’s mother. Most people are unable to answer this question, illustrating how internalized sexist values are).
There are countless benefits to an increase in the economic viability of women; one of which operates on the global scale. Indeed, it’s often been said that the most economically viable / sustainable action one can do is to abstain from the act of having a child; when given economic opportunity, women are far less likely to procreate, which (given some friendly extrapolation) could eventually lead to an aggregate decrease in global population, a much needed truth given that most experts would agree we’ve exceeded our carrying capacity.

(source: http://www.met-lausd.org)

Other arguments could include similarly utilitarian viewpoints; women are seldom given the tools to be Einsteins, Newtons, and other prolific figures, and the world suffers as a result. However, I’d like to (once again) challenge the prompt; even if the economic advancement of women meant nothing for the global world in terms of benefit or progress, it’s still very much worth advocating for, as everyone deserves the right to their humanity; even in the absence of the preconception that women owe the world progress.

Week 6

The Consolidated Appeals Process(CAP) is a program cycle for aid organizations attended to plan, coordinate, fund, implement, and monitor their response to disasters and emergencies, in consultation with governments. The two countries I analyzed last were Ghana and Mozambique. Mozambique GNI per capita is $610 and Ghana’s GNI per capita is $1,770 per capita. When Oxfam calls for developed countries to meet financial commitments of 0.7% of GNI as ODA it means that those countries will give 0.7% of donor’s national income to international aid and development conferences. In Mozambique aid from ODA has fluctuated from 1,951,530,000 to 2,096,920,000 with in just two years. This is understandable seeing that this country is struggling with Disease and health control. Ghana’s aid on the other hand has stayed somewhat consistent within the last couple years at 1,807,910,000.  ​

The amount of money that the US spends on aid is $30.55 billion. Breaking that down to how much each person receives the amount comes out to $80.37. Ghana on the other hand receives 125.8 million dollars in aid from the US. This money goes towards a variety of different areas. It goes towards food security, education, strengthening central and local governments, treatment to health problems such as malaria, and HIV. The other country I looked up was Mozambique. Mozambique receives 180.8 million dollars from the US for aid. The money they receive goes towards treatment for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. It also goes to clean water. The most money goes to the treatment of HIV/AIDS which is about 90 million dollars. Almost half of the amount of money that they receive for aid.

The connection between the Policy Coherence for Development and MDGS is that they have many of the same goals. This includes addressing political policies that include the economy, environment, and the people themselves to see worldwide growth out of poverty. As well as introducing new institutions in under developed areas.  They inter link the Policy Coherence for Development and the MDGS. The MDGS are the bigger picture and along with the policy make the goals easier to achieve.

Week 14 Gender Equality

Although the world has come so far to achieve gender quality, we are just still not fully there yet. This is evident in the readings we had for this week. Women all over the world, but specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, are still being oppressed. There have been many attempts to change this and enforce gender equality. I believe one of the first major policies made was in 1946. This was the commission on the Status of Women, that was made to emphasize and make known the struggles of women and to promote the empowerment of them as well. Even though I consider this  one of the most important because it was one of the first polices, there are others that are just as important if not more important. Such as the Millennium development Goals (MDG’s). In 2000 they made the third goal focusing on gender equality and empowering women. I think this was one of the more important actions made regarding gender equality due to it being top three on the MDG’s. Allowing the people to understand how serious and important gender equality is. Although that being on the MDG’s doesn’t mean its going to happen so easily. The gap between gender inequality and equality is still relevant. More action must be done to see this gap close and to achieve gender equality. These policies may look good on paper but once put to use they see little success. There must  be more policies implemented to enforce the ones that are already in existence. They don’t even have to be policies possibly maybe even law enforcement can be used to reinforce the polices.

Women all around the world face many inequality problems. When addressing the women of the very impoverished areas of Sub-Saharan Africa they face, if not all, most inequality problems women face all around the world. In order to stop this there are a couple of different equalizers that can be used. One of the main equalizer’s and possibly one of the most important is economic equality. In order to achieve that many issues must be confronted. Some of the first issues start right off the bat when these women are very young. They are sold to these men or their husbands at such a young age. Already these girls have little to no say in their own household. Which in turn leads to them not earning an education, not growing in areas or skill sets they would like, all in all not having a say in anything. Which causes the women to be lesser than the man due to them being constrained by their spouses. Also this results in more consumption of goods and less output if half of the population doesn’t work or contribute. If given the women a chance to get educated and a job it allows for their societies and economy’s to flourish. Gives them a chance to give back to their economy’s and allows them to be apart of their societies.

Week 14: Gender Equality and Economic Opportunity

In terms of where the world stands on gender equality in 2015, we have moved leaps and bounds from where women stood a century ago. However, there is still a very long way to go. According to the Blackboard text “Women, environment and sustainable development: making the links”, women are still oppressed in work, health, land rights and education to name a few. Also, women make up the majority of the world’s poor.

Logo for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Source: pen-international.org

Since the 1940’s, there have been a considerable amount of policies passed to protect women and encourage equality. In June of 1946, the Commission on the Status of Women was created to ensure women’s empowerment and promote discussion about women’s obstacles (see article here). 1975 marked the year that first United Nations Conference on Women was held in Mexico City, it “called upon governments to develop strategies that would bring gender equality, eliminate gender discrimination and integrate women in development and peace-building,” (source). In 2000, it was announced that goal number three of the Millennium Development Goals would be dedicated to promoting gender equality and empowering women (source). Although all of these efforts have led the world in the right direction, there still seems to be something missing – something more that can be done.

Image promoting gender equality. Source: caribank.org

Although the United Nations and other organizations have implemented policies promoting female empowerment, it is up to individual governments and cultures to promote change. According to globalissues.org, ” some places claims are made that women’s rights will be respected more, yet policies are sometimes not changed enough—or at all—thus still undermining the rights of women.”

In my opinion, I think it is important to focus efforts on women’s rights in impoverished nations. Although there is gender discrimination globally, developing nations should catch up to the rest of the world on the subject before we should push for change in places like the United States. Making small strides to stop clear human rights violations like female genital mutilations should be the utmost priority.  Besides FGM, this idea of arranged marriages between men and very, very young girls that subsequently leads to a lack of education, unemployment and perhaps household violence is something that needs to be addressed. In last weeks reading assignment, we read about Denise Dunning of Let Girls Lead. Just by making the small stride to persuade leaders of villages to outlaw marriage under 21 is a step in the right direction. Small movements like this can cause a domino effect and eventually catch the attention of governments that have the power to make it into law.

After spending a large part of this semester discussing poverty and how to end it, I’ve noticed that women play an incredibly integral role in any economy. I seems that for a nation to truly move out of poverty and toward sustainable economic growth, it truly cannot be done with women.

I don’t think this issue is specific to just developing nations, women in wealthy nations experience the same set backs – maybe just not as often or in such severe circumstances. Regardless of where it is in the world, women who are educated and employed will often quit their jobs or education once they get married and have children. Women who marry very young – something that is more common in less wealthy nations – will not even have access to an education because they become the primary care taker of that household at a very young age.

Political cartoon depicting gender equality. Source: politicalcartoons.com, Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zaitung, Austria.

According to the text provided on Blackboard, Women, Work, and the Economy, “There is ample evidence that when women are able to develop their full labor market potential, there can be significant macroeconomic gains.” Also, having a greater talent pool for employers to choose from creates competition which leads to economic growth implications.

Furthermore, Gallup conducted a study with around 800 business units in two different industries: retail and hospitality. The units in both industries showed that those with more gender diversity have better financial outcomes than those with less gender diversity – retail by 14% higher average revenue, and hospitality by 19% higher average quarterly net profit.

In my opinion, the bottom line is that women are a resource, just like men – and it would be foolish for a nation not to utilize all of its resources.

Girls just want to have fun

Kenya’s Flag

Women all over are oppressed and not treated equal. Empowering the young women of these sub-Saharan countries will allow them to contribute to their economy’s and society. A common factor to empowering women in responsibility and education. Educating these women will give them a chance to stand up for themselves and help them fight for what is right. All different types of groups and people are working for the empowerment of women. From individuals, governments, heads of states and even non profit organizations. Different strategies are being initiated by these people. From groups education women and basic health issues and concerns, to putting women inside the classroom to learn. People trying to help range from non profits to government organizations. One organization I came across was United Nations Girls Education. Which promotes education for women in Kenya. Started by Secretary General Kofi Annan, its goal is to allow equal rights to girls and boys when it comes to schooling. This organization is active now in Kenya. There are also other organizations in Kenya that work to supplying and offering information to women about health and HIV/AIDS. This organizations are slowly but surely working. The access to health information is becoming easier to women. Another large problem for women is genital mutilation. There is a big problem with female genital mutilation. The country of Kenya has issued a Anti-Female mutilation board attempting to oppress this issue. This is through government and non-government organizations. Although it is definitely a step in the right direction but it is still very relevant in the country.  Around 1/4 of women are mutilated or forced into marriage. It is less than before but that number is still very high. The enforcement of these laws need to be stronger.

A holistic approach that can be implemented to help stop the child rape, HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, child trafficking and coercive behaviors is stricter laws and enforcing them and education. Implementing police offers is more vulnerable villages and possibly curfews until this group is diminished. Also educating people allows them to understand from right and wrong. Education is prime to curb the chaos that is taking place. In Nigeria Boko Haram abducted around 300 girls from a bordering school. These girls are not found yet due to the lack of concern from the government and their initiative. Although Nigeria elected a new leader so hopefully he will be able to change this.

Week 13: Girl Power

It is no secret that women of all ages are oppressed all over the world, including Africa. Thankfully, governments, not-for-profits, and individuals are working to empower women and fight for social change.

In one example, Let Girls Lead is a movement started by Denise Dunning out of California that partners with organizations to help women in developing nations escape poverty and push toward helping them receive an education. In the article provided on blackboard, it states that Let Girls Lead is working hard toward allowing girls to stay in school by taking a stand against child marriage. The movement has proved successful by partnering with over 300 organizations and ” has contributed to improved health, education, and livelihoods for more than 3 million girls”.

Let Girls Lead logo. Source: huffingtonpost.com

For this assignment, I looked at the policies surrounding women and gender equality in Kenya. According to USAID, traditional gender roles keep women from having access to education and employment. If the status of women improved, the overall status of families and communities living in poverty would improve. Kenya passed a new Constitution in 2010 that proves a major step forward for women’s empowerment. Specifically, the Constitution required that “no more than two-thirds of elected or appointed public bodies consist of one gender.” However, it is difficult for women to excursive their new rights under oppressive family conditions. Luckily, USAID is working hard to provide these Kenyan women with safe environments that are free of violence and are encouraging them to embrace the Constitution. USAID also takes into account the important role that men and boys play in gender equality.

USAID logo. Source: usaid.gov

Another significant topic of concern in Kenya is gender-based violence. According to a statistic provided by USAID “about 45 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence. Many survivors have limited access to appropriate services.” USAID, partnered with the efforts of other organizations, has initiated preventing sexual violence by training police officers and offering crisis hotlines.

I applaud this approach because I think many times men are ignored in the quest for female empowerment. Men in a household play such an integral role in a household and I think it is impossible to truly achieve equality for women without also educating and including men as part of that plan. I also think that this Constitution is a tremendous step in the right direction for Kenya. Requiring women to hold positions in the government gives women a voice that they have never had before.

Michelle Obama supporting the #BringBackOurGirls effort. Source: mashable.com

In Nigeria, over 200 girls have been kidnapped by Islamic militant group Boko Haram. According to the article provided on Blackboard, the Nigerian government has made promises about bringing the girls back through negotiations with the extremist group; however, very little progress has been made. In a more recent article by BBC, it is reported that although there have been possible sightings, no girls have been found. “Boko Haram say the kidnapped girls have converted to Islam and been married off.” the article states. Clearly, all such negotiations done by the Nigerian government have fallen through. In fact, today, April 14th, 2015 marks one year since the girls have gone missing. Hundreds of people gathered in Nigeria’s capital city in remembrance of the girls, and protested against the government and Boko Haram. Nigerians believe that their government isn’t telling the whole story, and much of the blame points toward outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan.

I think the issue in Nigeria reflects much of what is happening in many SSA countries as far as there being a disconnect between human rights and politics. In my opinion, government corruption and political turmoil makes it impossible for a country to truly begin combatting human rights issues – especially women’s rights.

Week 13: Girl Power

It important to empower girls socially, because with empowerment, these girls will have  a better understanding on how to create change.  Social importance of empowering young girls allows them at a young age to understand their importance to society and will contribute to helping each other fight for their rights in the future.     For example, Denise Dunning created “Let Girls Lead”, which is campaigning to raise the national marriage age in Malawi from 15 to 21.  One family was marrying off their young daughter, and the daughter’s friends found this man and told him he could not marry her. With their knowledge of girl power, these women socially worked together to stop this marriage.   Let Girls Lead and Girls Empowerment Network are both strategies implemented by not-for-profits.

While researching Kenya, I came across policies that help protect girls in this country.  United Nations Girls Education Initiative is dedicated to promoting girls education and was started in 200 by th UN secretary General Kofi Annan.  It’s goal was to make sure by 2015 that children are able to complete primary schooling by allowing girls and boys to have equal access to free education.  The Forum for African Women Educationalists and UNICEF paired together to provide technical and financial support to gender training for teachers in Kenya.  I also found that the Kenyan Government created an Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Board and have been working with governmental and non-governmental organizations to eradicate FGM.  Although this is moving in the right direction, I do not believe this has had great effectiveness.  It is reported that girls are still running away from home to escape FGM.  Even though there are these laws exist against FGM, it is clear they are not being implemented in the region to protect girls.  The rates for FGM and child marriage in Kenya are around 26% and 27% but there are significant regional variations with rates as high as 98% in certain regions.  Girl empowerment is important socially because it lets girls stand together on these topics and try to make an end to it.

A holistic approach that could be implemented to help curb the issues of child rape, HIV/AID, sexual violence against women, child trafficking, and coercive behaviors is simply by enforcing more education.  With education, this will let people to become aware of these issues and an understanding of why it needs to stop.  Quality education is key to help curb these issues in Africa. With education comes with knowledge, and with knowledge comes empowerment and change.   One year ago in Nigeria, 219 girls were taken from their boarding school from the Boko Haram extremist group.  These girls are still not back.  According to Buhari, “We do not know if the Chibok girls can be rescued.  Their whereabouts remain unknown.  As much as I wish to, I cannot promise that we can find them”.  Not enough is being done to find these girls.  The government is not taking action to find these girls.  2,000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2014, forced to become sex slaves and fighters.  Wee can only hope with more education and empowerment, there will be an end to this behavior.

Empowering Women in Africa (Week 13)

Eve Ensler, a feminist playwright infamous for her canonical Vagina Monologues, gives a riveting speech in the following video, declaring there to be a woman’s cell in us all (a sentiment that speaks the necessity of an X chromosome for any person’s physical existence). Her aforementioned magnum opus is one of the most storied forms of contemporary feminist education available, using very real and equally visceral stories from interviews with women about their sexuality, race,gender, experiences, and perspectives, all in the hopes of destigmatizing womanhood.

Indeed, education is paramount to the empowerment of women, especially as it concerns women in Africa. Education, for the most part, has a much higher efficacy-to-implementation ratio than other means of empowering women; say, legislation, which can take far too long only to be overturned at the drop of a dime; or feminist change on the cultural level, an arguably impossible phenomenon to deliberately create and similarly, takes years upon years to implement. With the right non-profit entity or governmental effort (and similarly, with the right teachers and volunteers building schools), education can start today; in fact, it’s fair to say it started yesterday.

Ease of implementation means little if said education is ineffective in empowering women; luckily, this isn’t the case. Education is the key to autonomy, to giving young girls and women the confidence to execute their dreams and desires to full effect; the key to de-objectifying their persons and returning to them their rightful humanity. It’s the key to spreading awareness regarding HIV / AIDS, in turn preventing early graves for future doctors and lawyers who would give back in spades to their local communities; the key to informing young girls that marriage at a young age is a patriarchal construction robbing them of their autonomy, and that it’s in the interest of the global community for their development to continue in the absence of a choking marriage; and, as it just so happens, one of the easiest ways to create a positive cultural change is to forever alter the circumstances and lived experiences of 50% of the practitioners of said culture. Indeed, one of the more (admittedly problematic) infamous Marx quotes reads: “Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.”

Two young girls posing as part of an education campaign from Let Girls Lead (source: http://www.vitaminw.co)

An impressively effective NGO working to empower women in the African countries of Liberia, Ethiopia, and Malawi is Let Girls Lead, whose mission statement reads “….is building a global movement of champions to change systems and empower girls to attend school, stay healthy, escape poverty, and overcome violence.”

Among their many impressive accomplishments (including the fiscal and legislative support of over 600 grassroots organizations), the entity has campaigned to increase marital ages to 21 in Malawi, an effort that struck me as incredibly interesting, as it communicates the importance of cultural context in feminist / anti-violence work. In the United States, most feminist campaigns surround anti-violence / anti slut-shaming / sex positivity movements, with a similarly large portion of our political discussion devoted to whether a woman has a right to terminate a pregnancy. While anti-violence work has a universal presence (because violence towards women has a universal presence), I highly doubt something as legislative as abortion makes it into the mainstream SSA political discussion; similarly, discussing early marriages is certainly not on the political radar of any American citizen. This phenomenon only emphasizes the importance of understanding the context of where we’re serving, volunteering, working, or trying to implement any sort of social change; similarly, it’s a testament to the idea that we should work with communities, not for them, as they’re aware of the cultural constructs that westerners may be blissfully oblivious towards.

I selected Rwanda for my analysis of feminist efforts, as they have the highest rate of women involved in their upper level of government out of any country in the world, with numbers ranging anywhere from 49% to 64% depending on the given year. Naturally, there are a wide range of policies concerning a woman’s right to property, marital rights, and the prosecution of men who commit violence towards women that are passed through parliament to meaningful effect; this is hardly surprising, as when women have jurisdiction over decisions, the result will naturally be the passing of legislation that has the well-being of women in mind.

Rwandan elected officials, many of whom are women. (source: issafrica.org)

That said, the amount of change possible with a  parliament composed majoritively of women is far lower than it should be, arguably because women only have a presence in parliament and other high levels of government. The constituency, the lower levels of government, and non-executive branch gubernatorial institutions have low rates of female participation, with numbers generally ranging between 10 and 30 percent. This is a critical point; women need to be empowered system wide, on every level of the superstructure; otherwise, patriarchy will very much stay in place. Cultural context is also important here, as Rwanda’s recent history of violence lead to a shrunken political space that proved inefficacious compared to most governments; the future is far brighter as that space begins to grow.

(source: http://www.coloribus.com)

Action Aid International is an international organization “working with over 15 million people in 45 countries for a world free from poverty and injustice.” They propose that contemporary health education can influence advocacy efforts for HIV / AIDS eradication in five different ways:

1. Expose young girls and women to HIV /AIDS education, giving them the autonomy to make informed decisions.
2. Provide psychosocial benefits for young women, ensuring their self-esteem and ability to act
   on HIV prevention messages.
3. Create better economic prospects, therein creating lifestyle changes that can stem the influence of HIV / AIDS.
4. Influence power dynamics within sexual relationships.
5. Affect the social and sexual networks of women and young girls.

The above can easily be identified as a holistic, deliberate means of curbing the spread of HIV / AIDS, particularly as it relates to women. Always the critic, I find myself unable to find a missing piece in the above proposal.