Shiluinla Jamir
While causally speaking about an issue in a small group in one of my recent visit to one of the remote areas in Nagaland a dobashi pointing at me remarked, “though you are a women you can also say something (he wanted my wisdom to be pooled in to the subject about which they were discussing). Yes, I understand the time has come for us, Naga women to speak, to talk. Talk of the realities in which we live as young girls, as women. For behind the façade of education, jobs and other income opportunities that we have had the privilege of attaining, an under current politics of discrimination exist at all levels. Be it in the society, the church or our very own community based organizations. We can no longer afford to remain silent but reclaim the politics of speaking so that silence becomes history as much as making poverty history, or making affluence history.
Any visit to a village would be greeted by small girls washing clothes by the stream, elderly women carrying loads of firewood on their back, girls and young women carrying water. Besides that, the roads are in deplorable conditions making it extremely time consuming, when women have to travel for immediate medical attention or other urgent purposes. Coupled with that, infrastructures like primary health centers and other government institutions that is suppose to make women’s life easier remain almost non existent . You might ask why am I trying to connect these issues to women issue or rights? Well, conditions like this affects women more that any one else. For example no proper water supply means she spends extra time fetching water, walking for longer hours, time that can be spent on other income generating activity is spent on collecting water. Girls who participate in household activity like collecting water and firewood, babysitting often drop out of school since time that has to be spent on studying is being spent on doing household activities. Unavailability of water means poor hygienic conditions giving rise to a lot of diseases. When a child falls sick, it is normally the mother, after a day long hours of work she stays awake to nurse the child, coupled with that she is often pressed with the constant dilemma of whether to buy medicine for the sick child or to buy a kilo of rice to feed the rest of the family since even basic antibiotics are unaffordable/ available for the poor. Conditions like this calls us therefore to speak! And it is with this burden I come to you sisters seeking you solidarity and your action in hammering out alternatives to our present deplorable living conditions, daring you all to dreams with passion and compassion!
Thank you so much sisterhood network for initiating and hosting this gathering, in solidarity with women both successful and ordinary women across the globe. To me, this gathering is a dreaming of dreams and a resolution to speak and the resilience to move forward. It is an act of courage to reject all that impoverishes us, as women created in God’s image, be it culturally handed down views on women, or any other forms of discriminations. This gathering that you have initiated in this corner of the world, is a re-representation of our women’s powers, potentialities, capabilities, and competencies and of the rights and opportunities for all round development in all spheres of life. It is about speaking for us to have access and control for economic independence, political participation, and social development.
It is about daring to overcome several challenges both at the individual and collective level. It is about weaving again and again that our journey that we have started is a journey characterized by struggle. It is winging beyond subsidies, beneficiaries’ and other economic packages. It is about acknowledging our own selves as equals.
Dear Sisters, Many of you here this morning are from the margins of the society, some of you school dropouts, and many of you experiencing poverty at various levels. Inspite of the context you represent, your strength and faith in you as young Naga women in the context of disparity and unequal ness reminds me this morning of what Eleanor Roosevelt has said, “in small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. It is in these small places- homes and schools, health clinics, markets that women are lifting their lives and the lives of their families”. Yes, indeed!. In your own small ways within your limited spaces and confines you have lifted your life and is involved in lifting the lives of others. And that is the beauty of women’s movement. Your coming together this morning to mark the International Women’s Day itself is the beginning of that movement.
Yes, we have come together on this day to mark the International Womens’ Day in order to look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development. International Women’s Day is rooted in the struggle of women to participate in society on equal footing with men. The objective of this day is to: celebrate the struggle for women’s rights in socio-economic political and cultural domain, to reaffirm women’s solidarity in the struggle for peace and to show what women have achieved.
On this day it is only appropriate that we bring to remembrance, Lysistrata, who in ancient Greece, initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war. We also remember the spirit of the Parisian women who calling for “liberty, equality, fraternity” marched to Versailles to demand women’s suffrage during the French revolution.
We remember individuals like Maria Weston Chapman whose act of defying the “given” paved way towards a new understanding of “humans beings being created in God’s image” thus making it possible for blacks to sit with the whites. We remember Wangari Maathai, whose single-handed act of caring for mother nature resulted in making food available for the poor African women for whom life was about survival and not about living. We remember many other faceless and nameless women whose smallest acts of search for justice and equality and rights – in their hearts, minds who as women, as human beings reenacted. Whose acts have truly mapped the extent of our capacity to live with one another, and to lift one another.
In our remembrance and celebration and hope, we with pain and anguish remember who this morning at the break of dawn, braving the chilly wind has gone out to fetch water so that their brothers, and other family members of her household drinks, cleans and bathes with clean water. We bring to remembrance little girls and even small boys in solidarity who work as servants in many homes, uprooted from their families for lack of food, has to forcefully swallow down cold food, wear tattered clothes and broken shoes. We remember many women this morning who have been sold to brothel owners to work as sex workers, who have been sold by their own fathers and mothers, their own uncles and aunties, and their own husbands. We remember women who have been widowed this morning due to conflict and war, who from today will bear the whole responsibility of raising the family single handedly. May we hope for these sisters of ours to have strength to overcome fear and seek solutions in their many different ways, that they may find strength to dream a new dream and hope and work for a better life.
It is also appropriate that we celebrate ourselves! In each one of us there are the seeds of strength and glory, the strength to dare to dream dreams. In each of us there is the same life, the same light, the same love. Our bodies can lovingly touch, our hearts can heal and our minds can discern faith, truth, justice and therefore we celebrate our very own being as women- women as co- creators, nurturers and life givers for our children and nation.
Since the inception of the International Women’s Day, women across the globe have come a long way. While we are not completely there yet we have made some quantum leaps. Today more than 800 million women are economically active. More women and girls are learning to read and write, for some for the first time. Nations and families, our very own Naga families are investing in girl’s education. Women are living longer and healthier lives, that more of us are surviving childbirth as we gain greater access to reproductive health, discovering new levels of economic independence.
Yet we are also gloomed by the fact that not all women have had these opportunities and majority continue to be left out. The Human Development Report 1995 vividly exposes the most serious and provocative truth about the disparities between men and women around the world. It tells a pathetic tale of women in many countries facing gender inequalities in social, economic and political spheres. It also reveals that 70 % of the world’s poor and two thirds of the world’s illiterates are women and their economic and political clout is virtually non- existent compared to men. Virtually in every country, women work more hours than men, yet share less in the economic rewards. It is also true that if women’s work were accurately reflected in national statistic, it would shatter the myth that men are the main breadwinners of the world.
Therefore what we are talking or speaking about today is about recognizing our contribution as women, as homemakers, as professionals, as human beings, as bread winners. It is about saying, “Please do acknowledge my contribution, and my back breaking hours of work as house wives, as farmers, as co partners in uplifting our society, culture and church”. It is about saying that we ought to be given a chance to decide. It is about power re-distribution and acknowledging the existence of women as equals. It is about removing some of the terms and ideas that divides our value as girls from boys or as women from men, terms that pushes us further from the circle, terms that disfigures our identities. It is about giving equal opportunities to women as men and with all humility taking her works seriously. Women will gain power only when both men and women respect each other and accept the contribution of women thus affecting changes in the ideological system, in access to resource and in institutions and structures at several levels, such as the family, the household, the village, the community, the state and the market. When Economist Amartya Sen took up issues of women’s welfare, he was accused in India of voicing “foreign concerns”. He says, “ I was told Indian women don’t like that about equality. But I would like to argue that if they don’t think like that they should be given a real opportunity to think like that”. Yes, when we talk about women issues we are talking about space and the opportunity to think and act so that our voices can be heard and our actions felt.
A nation’s progress does not rely alone on protecting the fundamental rights but on ensuring that these women have access to what we call opportunity. No nation can expect to succeed in the global economy of the 21st century when half of its population lacks the opportunity and the right to make the most of their god given potentials. Government agencies and all other involved in women empowerment should create the conditions in which women have the right to make choices in their lives for themselves. No nation can hope to move forward if its women and children are trapped in endless cycles pf poverty; when they don’t have the health care they need, when they cannot read and write and when many have to drop out of school wooing to poverty.
I wish to call upon you to dream on, that’s what women in history have done and that daring act is the beginning of our talking.
(This is an abstract of a speech delivered on International Women’s Day organized by sisterhood network, Dimapur, Nagaland, India, an organization that has been impacting indigenous women’s lives through processes of empowerment)
