About the Womenfolk

"There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women."

- Madeleine K. Albright

Have you ever noticed how the prep time for a meal takes longer than the cooking itself, or how researching a paper takes longer than writing it? The past few months have been like that. Filling out applications while working to save money while moving while sending letters requesting letters of recommendation while visiting while working while packing. And now we're at a pretty amazing place where the chopping and measuring is done, we're mixing it together, and we're preheating the oven. As a case in point, today was my last day at my temp job, where I have really enjoyed spending every day for the last few months. But no longer working is leaving me with a few weeks to travel, stand as a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding, pack, and write this post I've been meaning to use as a chance to clarify my thoughts, even for myself, on why exactly I feel such a strong need to work with women.

In a happenstance of universal balance, I am applying for M.A. programs in gender and women's studies while preparing for three months as a volunteer in a gender-based violence prevention program. There are other volunteer tracks, every bit as important and some as relevant to my studies and interests; the HIV/AIDS prevention program, for example, speaks to the needs of women and children who are heads of household, and calls on my training as a gay rights activist (oh yes, I know how to put the condom on the banana. TRUST.). Yet I still felt the most important work I could do would be directly with women.

As we've mentioned, Rwanda is an unusual case amongst not just African nations, but all nations. Their relative peace followed by abrupt and terrifying violence and their subsequent westernized approach to justice have all created a set of unique circumstances in terms of both culture and economics. But no facet of this development is more singular than how women have taken a new place in Rwandan society. Following the genocide, there were more women in Rwanda than men. This alone created new circumstances. Women needed to be able to inherit land from their male family members who had been murdered. Women needed to be not only allowed, but encouraged to run businesses. And a generation of Rwandan men has grown up for the first time in a society where women are equals. The westernized approach to justice I mentioned also means that the political system has been totally restructured over the last 15 years, with one of the new laws being that women must hold at least 30% of elected offices - and the other 70% must be split between men and women. As a result, Rwanda became the first parliament in the world with a female majority. That's incredible, crazy, and rapidly changing the face of one of the fastest developing nations in Africa.

All of these things make Rwanda the most fascinating case study a hopeful M.A. in gender theory could ever wish for. What has Rwanda developed that is translatable? What's transferable? And what commonly held beliefs about gender development can this nation prove or disprove? What experimental programs can they lend credence to or prove useless in practical application? One of the things I personally hope to examine closely while I am there is the success of microcredit programs. I've been interested in these since I first read about them in college. Here in the U.S., we give loans on, oh, say, a house. Big loans. It takes 30 years to pay them off. We do slightly smaller loans for things like higher education. A tiny loan is a credit card; quite frankly, the holder of that debt hopes you never pay it back, but pay interest in perpetuity. Micro-credit loans are tiny, tiny loans, with strict payment plans. They often encompass financial counseling, and they are meant to help women and their families become financially independent. A woman might take out a loan for a cow and a chicken, for example, and use it to feed her family, sell any extra milk and eggs, and use that extra money to pay back the loan. The program is happy she paid it back quickly, so they can turn around and lend that money to another woman - or maybe two, if she paid enough interest. You'll notice I keep mentioning these loans in terms of women, and there's a good reason for that. Micro-credit programs exist in many nations, including small African countries, and bigger countries like India, but they all have one thing in common: they work best when they only lend to women. In many cases, they only work AT ALL when they lend exclusively to women. Men hold just 6% of micro-credit loans in Rwanda, but they represent 4 out of 5 loan defaulters. How is that possible? Why is that? Is it cultural? Why does it happen in so many countries? Interconnected as these issues are, I also want to examine: how does women's financial independence play into or deter gender-based violence? How has reproductive rights in a small, only recently de-colonized and still very religious country been influenced by such a dominant female presence in politics and in every aspect of the developing economy?

I struggle constantly to narrow my interest in what is such a huge field, such a small title for such a broad range of needs. I try to remember that it's more important to do one thing and do it well than to spread myself across not just countries but continents, not just ages but generations, not just issues but whole genres in an attempt to do whatever small part I can to meet every need, a feat not yet achieved by the combined power and (vague and inconsistent) interest of hundreds of nations. I'm currently obsessed with starting a charity and a non-profit. For the cost of a lunch out with the girls - $36 - a woman in Africa can be given everything she needs to save her life during childbirth, still the leading cause of death amongst women in developing nations. I want to start a "Ladies Who Lunch" charity, where women put down $36 for a meal, we give the money to hospitals in Africa (Tanzania and Rwanda are particularly vulnerable, tantalizingly close to meeting women's medical needs with just a little more funding), and they listen to a speaker instead. I'm also struggling with a local problem. Here in the United States, former child prostitutes are turned away from shelters because they are hesitant to deal with sexually active minors. There are currently about 44 beds in shelters where former child prostitutes are welcome - and roughly 200,000 competing for the privilege of a place to sleep. Most of them get lost in the foster system, become runaways, or are held indefinitely in detention facilities as material witnesses to a crime: their own statutory rape. Here are the most vulnerable members of our society, already victimized by circumstances beyond their control, being victimized yet again by our culture's inabilty or unwillingness to accept children who are sexually active, whether that was their consenting choice or not.

And don't get me started on Afghanistan. It's better if I just don't read about the state of women there anymore. If I disappear, you'll know where my flight is headed. What a mess.

People like to remind me how lucky I am to be alive at this time in our history. Women can vote! they remind me. Women have equal rights, they run for President! And it's true in many ways. But it isn't enough. It isn't enough to have what we have here, and ignore how many nations oppress an entire gender, more than half their population. And it absolutely isn't enough to rest easy and pat ourselves on the back, thinking about what a great job we've done. Before the Shah of Iran was overthrown in the 70's, Iranian women had equal rights to men in the eyes of the law. They worked, they went to university, they dressed as they pleased. And then, in the interest of progress, they helped overthrow what they saw as an unjust regime, only to watch helplessly and horrified as it was replaced with one that took away their rights and over the years grew more and more violent towards them. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And as I watch Stupak amendment pass the House of Representatives, and see Secretary of State Hilary Clinton advocate for the needs of women and girls in every single thing she does from one of the highest seats of power in our government, I do wonder which way we're going. But the way I see it, we can always tilt in either direction, and only constant work and diligence will keep us on track.