It is a majestic oasis here in the city. While most of its surroundings here in midtown are steel buildings reaching far into the clouds, the library seems content existing in its 2 story stone splendor.
But I digress…
As I said, I have spent the last week at the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. It has truly been an opportunity I feel so amazingly privileged to be a part of. From the moment I stepped inside last Monday it was clear this was going to be an experience unlike any. I was suddenly surrounded by some of the most powerful women in the world. Now these women are not presidents, or secretaries of state or queens, yet they are powerful. They are powerful beyond politics, they are powerful in heart, in spirit, in mind. They are powerful in diversity. They are from all over the globe: Zimbabwe, Taiwan, Norway, Chile, Rwanda and so on. From the first moment I stepped in and joined the company of these women, it was clear how large their shadows, and their impacts are on the world.
The first session I went to was on preventing gender based violence. We listened briefly, and then split up into discussion groups to tackle the first question, “ What is the biggest issue concerning violence against women in your country and what legislation has been enacted to combat it?” Discussion went around the group from the executive director of a Canadian advocacy group to the tribal leader of a village of Nigeria, each with an eloquent statement of the vast challenges of gender based violence and attempts at quelling it. Then it got to me—and I couldn’t string two words together, let alone a sentence, and hell if I know anything about specific gender based violence legislation. I’m a full time volunteer at a Fair Trade organization for God’s sake!!, but I want to learn!! So I sat, listened and tried to take in as much as I could while feeling like an overwhelmed child in the company of so much experience and knowledge.
The week, or more accurately, my self confidence, got better. By Thursday I knew my way around and wasn’t feeling like a wide eyed child anymore. My first session this day was. “Mental Health & Psychosocial Consequences of HIV/AIDS for Women,” put on by the NGO Committee on Mental Health. I sat, listening intently as three highly experienced professional women called for mental health workers in a humanitarian context and an integration of public health and mental health programs. In my head, I am thinking, “this is me! This is what I want to do!!” Now, this is no surprise, this realization, its what I have been working toward for a while now, but the certainty, the passion I felt, for that hour and a half. I knew I was EXACTLY where I belonged. And towards the end of the presentation when a woman sitting across the aisle from me stood up to thank the presenters, tears began to roll down my face. She explained, crying herself, that she is a Ugandan woman who is HIV+ and her 19-year-old daughter is failing out of school due to the mental health consequences of the disease. She told us that her husband had died from the disease in 1994 but that her family has suffered most, not from the physical ailment, but the psychological ones. As she spoke, I cried. This is what I am to do; I am to help alleviate the suffering of those already suffering from so much. That, I can do.
But the day didn’t end there. After a brief break with enough time for lunch a and chat with my mom, I headed over to my next session, “Empowering Women Through Life Choices.” I expected this to be a session helping us, those who work with women, to learn to empower them. In the end, it was more of a motivational speaker. She was a cognitive behavioral therapist, who specialized in addiction and her general opinion was that we as humans can “make the best” out of any circumstances, if we so choose. They key, in her pep talk was the choosing. As she spoke of simple psychology principles, I began to take a closer look at her message (since I do, after all, have a degree in the field.) Now, don’t misunderstand me, I fully support these messages of choice that she was sending, but it seemed to me that something was missing. One anecdote she gave was the story of her 10-year-old daughter. Her daughter wanted to go on a school trip that was going to cost about $200 and after talking it over she and her husband decided that they could not afford this. Their daughter spent and evening baking cookies, the next day filled a wagon and walked the streets of her neighborhood selling cookies, raising the money herself. She was empowered. This is a wonderful anecdote, but what if, when she went home, there had not been the ingredients for cookies, or the money to buy them? What if she had not had a wagon to tote them around or neighbors who could afford to buy them or a safe street to walk on? There are women all over the world who don’t have money to feed their family, let alone bake cookies. There are women living in slums, surrounded by other people as poor as they. There are women and children all over, even here in the US, that couldn’t walk down the street and be safe from violence. How do I empower THOSE women? The ones without resources? Those women did not CHOOSE the circumstances in which they exist. Can we really tell them this is about their CHOICE? When I asked the presenter this, she told me, “Even in the most terrible of circumstances, the concentration camps and in the holocaust there were people who chose to be empowered.”
Hm. Well I am glad she read The Diary of Anne Frank, but I wish she remembered that Anne died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. I want to try and preserve both body and spirit. And though Anne’s story is the one that we like to hear, there are millions of other stories. I want to know how to empower THEM.
Strangely, the empowering thing to me about he session had less to do with choices and more to do with the critical thinking I was able to engage in. I was thankful that due to the fact I already was familiar with the psychological mumbo jumbo she was rattling off, I could critically look at what she was saying and apply it to a worldview, not just a limited ethnocentric view like she was giving. It was good to know my capabilities.
And the week continued as such, with sessions on post conflict community building and pornography and patriarchy. I met, listened to and mingled with some of the most educated, experienced individuals I’d ever met. I made connections, I assured passions, I opened my eyes and more importantly, my ears to the women and the men of the world. I found what they had to say heartbreaking, painful, powerful, astounding…but mostly, I found it hopeful. I find it hopeful that Rwanda, a country only 15 years removed from one of the most horrific genocides we have seen, leading the world with 56% of its parliament women. I found it hopeful to see so many women coming together and having conversations that 10 years ago, 5 years ago would not have been happening. I saw progress and I was honored to be a part of it.
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