In 128 countries around
the world, women cannot get a job. They cannot, either, have a
passport, or a simple ID card that proofs their identity, that
attests who they are. In 15 of these 128 countries, laws are not the
ones solely responsible for these prohibitions: men, especially
husbands, are the barriers between women and their freedom.
As a woman, I was
fortunate enough to have been born in a country where – technically
– such barriers did not exist. In Brazil I have an ID card, a
passport; I could find jobs and work in whichever career I chose, but
none of these was any assurance of a life without prejudice, sexual
harassment or plain injustice.
We, the lucky ones of
the Western Civilization, have a tendency to think that these issues
connected to women empowerment are not among us: we claim to have
gender equality, but do we? In the United States women still make 78cents for every dollar earned by a man, a data reported for the year
of 2013. This is a gap of 22%, and only one of the many differences
among men and women.
In my home country, a
great research was made: determined to understand the relationship
that women had with the common comments they hear from men on the
streets, the feminist website Think Olga launched “Chega de Fiu
Fiu”. It started with a questionnaire answered by eight thousand
women and it became a campaign against sexual harassment in publicspaces. Of the women that responded, 99,6% of the women said they
suffered at least one type of harassment; 83% claimed not to like it,
and 81% said they changed their mind about going out of their houses
or passing in front of an area dominated by men, afraid of the
comments they could hear. Finally, 73% said they never responded to
any of the comments because they are afraid.
This is 2015 and women
are afraid to leave their houses. They are not only afraid of the
social violence they can suffer, to be robbed or mugged; they are
afraid of men. They are afraid to speak their minds, they are afraid
of their husbands; they do not have equal rights. How can a society
truly move forward when it neglects its half? It cannot. Women are
half of the population of the world: empowering women is empowering
humanity
