I want to recap what I’ve learned about young women in India, and some of my thoughts on “womanhood” around the world, in general. It’s a little long, I get carried away sometimes!
The girls i work with at the center are – as I’ve said – balls of energy, song, laughter, physical contact, kindness, curiosity, giggling, boy crazy, self-conscious, jealous, dramatic, creativity and budding adult thought. They are like all young women the world around.
These Indian girls do have their particular sets of cultural & familial expectations & challenges. They grow up with the knowledge that “Your family loves you & holds you in their heart and always will, but you will be married and move into your husbands family’a house and they will be your REAL family from that day on & forever more.” Weddings can be up to a week long affair, including a ceremony when the girl leave her parents house forever…. There are photos taken for the wedding album and this grief is so real & painful. The parents tears are wrenching & girls fright and supressed panic read so clearly.
There are howver families who do not care much for daughters.. They exist to help around the house, and then be married off for a dowry & to be someone else’s servant. The all know the reality of bride burnings, results of “kitchen accidents.” What a way to live… Knowing this from your earliest memories.
The girls at the womens center surely range the whole gamut. Some have “boyfriends” they mention in whispered giggles. (the relationship mostly consists of phonecalls or SMS, and occassional lunch meetings. No physical contact ever). But to the girls, this is real love they feel in their hearts, just as you & I do. And they know they will be married to another man of their parents choosing… And that hopefully, eventually, maybe, love will grow between them.
Parkashi, who told me I am her lifetime friend & big sister (didi), told me that her ex-boyfriend cheated. I don’t know what constitutes that in their social world (calling another girl? More?), but she said “my heart – dil – my heart it….” she then clasped her hands together & ripped them apart. “Heartbreak” I said in English, “I understand… Same for me & my ex. Listen to me – bataiyeh – your didi…. In time, time passes, your heart will come together again” and I put her hands in mine & folded them back together. Her huge deep brown luminous eyes were skeptical & full doubt. “no, didi, never. No man.. Never again. I will get job. Move to america for job. I will do mehendi (henna) for your wedding one day. No man for me.”
I love her spunk & strength & idealism…. But I twinge in my heart at the reality I know. Her father makes very little money; she cooks all the meals. She is about 20, and will no doubt be married off soon to a man she doesn’t know. Most girls accept this fate; I pray she doesn’t dissolve, I pray that she won’t lose all faith.
But today the girls have a few years to be GIRLS, without mother-in-law problems and babies.
They come to the center to learn job skills, and the beauty teacher says many of her girl have found jobs at salons (”saloons” they say) a hair dressers, Doing nails, bridal makeup & mehendi. They love makeup like every other girl in the world… Their radiant brown skin becomes tinted with pink eye shadow and the dark black eyeliner makes them exotic looking & stunning. The know howto bat their eyes coyingly & wink at one another in practice flirtation. They make realistic roses from yellow paper. They embroider peacocks and flowers on bits of cloth.
And they try hard (well… The ones not busy gossiping!)… To learn computers. Right now they are making spreadsheets of a classes grades. Students names, class names & grades, totals, minimums, maximums, percents. Pretty decent formula skills, but education is so rote here… I wonder if they understand what they’re doing or simply parroting.
I have ideas for them to try… But the computer teacher doesn’t like them straying off topic & spends her afternoons on her cell phone texting.
Most of the “schooling” is lax… Yes there are exams & passing, but the day to day routine is hardly a routine. Curriculum & lesson plans don’t factor into this world.
The director, a tiny outspoken middle-aged woman named Laxmi, does wonderful work. She started this center, in the 4 shabby stained rooms with curtain dividers. The girls are all young & unmarried, most have maybe a 4th grade education. Some whisper to me that they made it all tye way to grade 12 and want an MBA… I squeeze their heads and whisper back “such a smart girl!” I try never to compliment physical beauty: Indian women live in a world super-saturated by emphasis only on their looks. Fair skin, slender frame & waist length thick black hair are the pinacle of beauty. The darker girls are picked on, even by teachers. All girls & women will spend a lifetime buying “whitening cream” for their skin. The girls with curly hair try to hide it by slicking it down with oil & very tight braids.
I compliment, instead, them for being smart, funny, clever, sweet, kind, for sharing, for being a good friend, for working hard, for being creative. I like the bashful smiles I get when I say these things. My favorite is to tell them they are smart… For the ones who do, and will always, live hard supressed lives, I couldn’t stand for them to never once feel they are smart or worthy.
Laxmi now also has women “in the field”, in the very horrifying slums, teaching basic hygiene, child care, etc. And she is beginnig a basic education course for older women – totally neglected by ngo’s typically – it’s all for children. So Laxmi wants to give them a fixed curriculum which will bring their reading & writing skills up to 4th grade level. A very useable level for their environment.
Being a woman anywhere is complex. Women all over the world fill the range of daughter, sister, wife, mother. girlfriend, friend, best friend, cousin and neice, grandmother, employee or boss. We can be at once a 1 dimensional female to be looked at by men, and a multidimensional woman of potential and talent and wisdom. Keepers of the home & children & matriarch, and yet a voiceless subservient to the whims of men in authority.
Each culture & country has is own particular forms of womens empowerment & strength, and disabilities & injustices.
India has a woman at the head on the country. Indian women risk being burned by hot oil for not being a suitable choice for marriage.
I applaud those who help all around the world to fight injustices & mistreatment of children who cannot speak for themselves; for those who protect our world & natural environment so that our earth will be healthy and life sustaining; for those who work tirelessly to ensure all people are able to worship & pray in the way they want to in peace.
The rights of women an girls to be empowered & know their own self-worth strikes a particular chord in me. I have been given the singularly, unimaginable gift of being born a woman in America, to parents who encouraged and celebrated my growth as a woman of potential, creativity & choice. I have tears pricking my eyes at the knowledge of how rare a gift this is. Most women in the world have no frame of reference for this… They cannot even understand the notion that they can DO something – or anything – besides be a wife & mother subject to her husband, father or mother-in-law.
So here I am. In the chaos of India. With silly laughing singing girls who braid my hair and have me teach them to say “You are funny.” in English. This almost a pitance.. A token of effort to that which I dream of. I hope – for my own vanity’s sake – that at least one girl is smiling at the fun day she had on her walk home to cook dinner.
Help a sister out! Yay – this morning I received a package from Women for Women Int’l – it had the photo & information about Noor from Afghanistan, who I am sponsoring. This isn’t “donate money to needy children” (while a worthy cause)… WFWI helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives and start business of their own. They help these women grow from victim to survivor to productive member of their societies. So I’m sponsoring one woman for her one-year program to gain job and life skills, and economic independence.
Meet Noor, from Afghanistan. She’s 2 years older than I, is married and has 5 children. She has had no education and cannot read or write more than her own name. Her family lives in a house without water or electricity. She rated her family’s health as “fair”, but that they can rarely get medical treatment because they cannot afford it. She cites her obstacles to earning an income as “lack of education” and “lack of skills”. One thing I love about WFWI is that they encourage letter writing and sending photos between sponsors – they want it truly to be a handson experience for everyone. That’s pretty cool.
I’m not one to use my blog as an “ad”, per se, but I really believe in this organization & what they’re doing. So rather than recap, here’s their “What We Do”, in their own words:
“As each woman engages in a multi-phase process of recovery and rehabilitation, she opens a window of opportunity presented by the end of conflict to help improve the rights, freedoms and status of women in her country. As women who go through our program assume leadership positions in their villages, actively participate in the reconstruction of their communities, build civil society, start businesses, train other women and serve as role models, they become active citizens who can help to establish lasting peace and stability.
Women begin in our Sponsorship Program where direct financial aid from a sponsor helps them deal with the immediate effects of war and conflict such as lack of food, water, medicine and other necessities. Exchanging letters with sponsors provides women with an emotional lifeline and a chance to tell their stories —maybe for the first time. As their situations begin to stabilize, women in our program begin building a foundation for their lives as survivors.
While continuing to receive sponsorship support, women embark on the next leg of the journey and participate in the Renewing Women’s Life Skills (ReneWLS) Program that provides them with rights awareness, leadership education and vocational and technical skills training. Women build upon existing skills and learn new ones in order to regain their strength, stability and stature on the path to becoming active citizens.
Women for Women International believes that establishing a means to earn a sustainable living is critical to being fully active in the life of a family, community and country. To help women transform their new skills into financial independence and sustainability, we offer job skills training to strengthen women’s existing skills and to introduce new skills in traditional and non-traditional fields so women can access future employment opportunities.”
For more info:
Web: WomenForWomen.org
Twitter: @WomenForWomen
How much has REALLY changed? Sure – “kids these days” gnawed on Mom’s smartphone in their strollers, had fisher price laptops in preschool & as middle schoolers, probably can’t conceive of a world without facebook, twitter, texts and iphone apps. Sure, they can use a computer… but has this immersion in “technology” translated to the professional world of IT? Is there still distinct gender divide, with far fewer women working in the technology and science fields? Are we working to dispel the stereotypes and misconceptions (”programming is solitary work”, “IT is just for geeks”).
I began researching this question, and found a bevy of non-profits and organizations working with middle-school girls. I want to highlight one clever program, with the girls’ actual projects online:
This program was designed to support the interest of middle school girls in computers and, ideally, increase the number of women and girls – especially from underserved populations – in pursuit of careers in IT and science. The girls worked in pairs to develop and create a web-based game.
In addition to learning the skillset, it turned out that the benefits were MUCH more than expected. They learned “pair programming” (working as a team and collaborating), they learned to challenge stereotypes about IT work as solitary, and received mentoring from female adult role models.
And perhaps most intriguing, that the “girls’ games challenge the current thematic trends in the gaming industry. Games were used to express and work through fears and social issues. Most had bright, vivid colors, and the stories took place in real world settings and involved moral decisions. Few had violent feedback. The games were also spaces to play with gender role stereotypes by challenging authority figures and using humor.”
And NATURALLY, you can explore the online games developed by the girls on the site! Just remember: these are middle schoolers learning programming basics – an if/then “choose your own adventure” or “mad libs” style games, built in Flash MX. Nothing fancy – but definitely funny and shows their personalities as well …. I would have LOVED this when I was in middle school!!!
(PS: If you’re an educator, they also have a full curriculum & lesson plans online as well.. go nuts!)
Do you know of any other similar programs in your area? Do you have a daughter interested in computers? Or are you also a woman in the IT field – what’s your take on this issue?
(c) Farzana Wahidy
Farzana (farzanawahidy.com) is a photojournalist for The Associated Press, and a 24-year-old Afghan woman raised during the Taliban era, going to school in secret. It is clear, both through her images and words, that she feels a great responsibility – and honor – to document the stories and lives of her fellow Afghan women.
And hers are not images of “plight” or mere female anonymity. For instance – the photo study titled simply “Burqa” is uniquely intimate: a mother holding her toddler daughter who is pointing at her covered eyes, fancy haute-couture shoes peeking out from beneath the blue cloth, and a first-person point of view of a woman looking through the eye hole of her burqa at a clothing store in Kabul.
This week alone, two of her images have made the NY Times “Pictures of the Day”.
An interview she did on the website WarShooter gave wonderful insight into goals as a photojournalist and what she hopes to accomplish on behalf of Afghan women:
Q: Why is photojournalism important in Afghanistan?
A:“Over 90 percent of Afghans are illiterate,” she was quoted as saying, “so they can’t read to get information about their country and the world. I find photojournalism more useful because such a large percentage of my country’s population gets their news from looking at photos.” In that same interview, she acknowledged the peril of her calling. “Some people say to me that if I die doing this work that it will be a shame for my family. If I die doing this, it’s not a shame for me because I have big responsibility with this job. If I die doing this work, I will be proud.”
Q: The lives of Afghan women are slowly changing. What do think of the future for Afghan women?
A: I think Afghan women should not be sleeping now. There are reports everywhere that the rights for women are changing, but it is only happening in the big cities. But in the provinces, they are still not aware of the freedoms they have.
Q: What needs to happen to improve this?
A: There needs to be more classes for men and for women to teach them the rights of women. We need to change the minds of the men. If this happens, then women’s minds will change too.
Want more? Here’s a video of Farzana discussing one of her photographs: Farzana Wahidy
Rachel Papo is an Israeli photographer and she has a intruiging photo story online of the daily life of female Israeli soldiers. It is, at first view, powerful: the striking images of young, physically strong, beautiful girls holding their guns and training. But the expressions and nuances are also so subtle and complex. It’s a wonderfully unique perspective on this slice of life, and a tremendous photojournalistic piece.
http://www.serialno3817131.com
In her own words:
“At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted. She is plucked from her home surroundings and placed in a rigorous institution where her individuality is temporarily forced aside in the name of nationalism. During the next two years, immersed in a regimented and masculine environment, she will be transformed from a girl to a woman, within the framework of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict. She is now a soldier serving her country, in a military camp amidst hundreds like her, yet beneath the uniform there is someone wishing to be noticed, listened to, and understood.
Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back to several Israeli army bases, using the medium of photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world. Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.”
