(Right Click here to download Audio - MP3)
Wednesday 8th March was International Women’s Day, a day when the world is supposed to stop and consider the plight and role of women around the globe. As could be expected what we saw and heard, if anything, was mostly wealthy white women talking about how more needs to be done.
In some isolated cases the mainstream media did give some coverage to the vast majority of women who don’t live in the wealthy west or who do live in developed societies but don’t have access to the same opportunities as their wealthy sisters.
Of course, being a male, I will never fully be able to comprehend the way a woman experiences the world but what I can do is spend some time considering what we men have done to women throughout history.
In recent times we have heard a lot about the violence in Sudan. We hear about the guns and the death marches and role of international companies after the oil riches in the south of that nation but not much about the widows and young girls raped and brutalised in the name of multinational oil. We don’t hear much about the ongoing use of rape as a weapon of mass demoralisation. We don’t hear much about the brutalisation of young girls who are used as tools in the battle for more resources.
None of this is new of course. Since men first learnt how to kill each other, women have been used as pawns in male power games. But we don’t need to travel very far from our relaxed and comfortable lounge rooms to find women in our own neighbourhoods who are the victims of powerful interests.
Take the recent debate over the so called ‘epidemic’ of abortion. Tony Abbott, the mad monk, reckons there are over 100,000 abortions a year in Australia but none of the mainstream media presses him on where he gets this figure from. It is, of course, a lie with no foundation in fact.
What is fact is that men, and a number of women as well, believe that the female body is something to be controlled and regulated by others, namely men. The issue at the heart of this debate is not abortion, but rather some crazy religious idea that the male ‘seed’ is the most important biological factor and that the woman only ‘carries’ this ‘seed’ to maturity. Under this crazy, prehistoric notion, the female body is no more important than a pot of soil.
If we develop this a little more we can begin to discuss the female body (and the female psyche) as something to be ‘subdued’ – to use the Christian notion of the god given right of men to ‘subdue’ the earth for their own means. Under this way of thinking the female is nothing more that a good or a chattel to be traded, used and disposed of according to the needs of the men around her.
Her body is a ‘fertile bed’ ready to receive the male ‘seed’ and once the baby is born, the female, now transformed into a ‘mother earth’ archetype, is perceived as the best equipped to nurture the baby to adulthood. The male is, therefore, reduced to the role of observer. However, not being content with this role, the male must be likewise transformed into the ‘provider’ and ‘protector’. After all, it is argued, it is from the male that this new life has sprung, even though it was the female who gave birth.
However not all females are deemed to be suitable mothers. Teenagers and single women are defined as deviant and as such they have reserved for them the strongest sanctions and rebukes. Welfare mums, bludgers, cheats and a burden are a few of the epithets used against them. In short, the female is denied humanity and thus denied the right to control or regulate her own body. It is she who must subject herself to the demands of men.
These notions are not confined to the beliefs of some crazy Christians but they seem to be almost universal and certainly predate Christianity. However, the reality is that these notions do exist and lead whole societies to condone and allow a range of practices which subject women to objectification and the denial of their human rights.
To take another example of where our ‘wealthy society’ status is undermined we only have to look as far as the caring roles. When it comes to the care and support of the disabled, women bear the majority of the burden while male bureaucrats, often aided by complicit female colleagues, make the rules. Almost $30 billion a year is the estimated value of the unpaid carer work done in the privacy of the family home, primarily by women. That is, $30 billion dollars of potential wealth is transferred from the female carers into the pockets of someone else.
While our governments and mainstream media focus on the “welfare cheats” they very rarely discuss the biggest welfare recipients of all, corporations and the captains of industry who are the ‘fortunate’ recipients of government largesse. Of course when it comes to single mothers, there is no compassion or generosity or offering of assistance. Imagine if the government was forced to divert the $30 billion dollars a year unpaid family carers contributed back into support for the disabled and infirm. Why, I can almost hear the Hugh Morgans and Katie Laheys and Chip Goodyears of the corporate class choking on their Golden Parachutes.
The denial of the rights of unpaid family carers, of whom women just ‘happen’ to be in the majority, is a form of passive aggressive violence just as devastating and debilitating as family violence in its effects. Isolation, a sense of hopelessness, poor health and depression are the long term effects of such institutionalised neglect. We will never know how many suicides or early deaths are a direct result of this form of institutionalised abuse.
Why are women are treated in this way as unpaid family carers? I go back to my earlier comments. Because we have allowed a very narrow and inhumane definition of woman to be enacted through the laws and institutions which bring about the social conditions under which they must live.
While the headlines will gravitate towards the sensational and graphic, there is a war being fought out behind the closed doors of our neighbour’s homes. This war doesn’t have the guns and blood and prestige of international conflict, nor does it have the same level of societal devastation. Nonetheless, these private wars, being fought behind the closed doors of the homes in which women must make choices about their own bodies or the bodies of others, is just as brutal at the personal level.
International Women’s Day is not a day that should be remembered for its celebrity spokeswomen although some of them do try and make a difference. It’s a day in which we all must take stock of were we stand with our sisters.
As a male I will never be able to fully comprehend the effects of the brutal treatment of girls and women in such places as Sudan or the institutionally privatised confines of their homes and I may not be able to assist them but that does not excuse me from my responsibility to do my best to support my sisters in their struggle to overcome male dominance and oppression in all its forms.