What Will You March For?
Women all over the world will be marching this weekend for women’s liberation. Please consider sharing your response to one or all of these questions (even a few sentences would be wonderful for us to read):
As a female of your constituency, what will you march for? How have you fought, in sessions and in the wide world, for women’s liberation and/or your own liberation as a female? What do you want for you and your sisters?
Los Angeles, California, USA
In solidarity with the global Women’s March for women’s liberation, my constituency will march against the abuse of the girl child who is forced into child marriage.
In Northern Nigeria where I live, girl-child marriage is conspicuous and the society does not frown at it. Older men are marrying girls as young as eleven or twelve years of age and forcing themselves into their tender bodies under the pretext of fulfilling their marriage rites to their wives.
The result is the vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) disease that is ravaging local communities in Northern Nigeria. A vesicovaginal fistula is an abnormal hole between the bladder or rectum and the vagina that allows a continuous and involuntary discharge of urine into the vaginal vault. It is common among teenage girls who deliver babies.
The adult men who are supposed to be protecting children are the ones abusing them. Therefore we will march against
- girl-child marriage;
- exploitation of women in work and religious places;
- abuse of single mothers and married women.
And we will demand the rights of women. We will continue to speak against all forms of violence against women and girls. We will not stop until an end is put to them.
Abuja, Nigeria
In my constituency, our march will be about the plight of women in war zones and conflict situations.
Nigeria is still reeling from the Boko Haram insurgency and its atrocities that have left entire communities in the North East as refugees in overcrowded and underfunded IDP (internally displaced persons) camps.
Now Fulani herdsmen, nomadic cattle grazers, have been wreaking havoc all over the country. They leave death and carnage in their wake as they move cattle into occupied and unoccupied lands and private and public farmlands. They sometimes sack and burn entire villages in search of grass for their cattle. Due to the escalating deaths they caused in 2017 (over three thousand), Fulani herdsmen have been named one of the deadliest terror groups in the world, comparable to ISIS and al-Shabaab.
My discharge often gets in the way of my words when it comes to this issue. I grieve for my fellow women in war-torn zones who are ravaged by the enemy and allies alike, who are traded and passed around like cigarette joints amongst military men who are supposed to be protecting them. The IDP camps have turned into poaching grounds for cheap or forced sex. Then the abused women are shamed and denigrated. Nobody wants to marry them or employ them. They have next to no chance [almost no chance] at getting a decent education so as to better themselves. Their future careers are shot [ruined] even before they begin. They are destined for perpetual exploitation.
Our fight is to raise awareness about this tragedy in our IDP camps and conflict zones; to work with civil liberties organisations; and to educate, advise, and encourage the victims and their relatives whom we have the opportunity to meet.
We send aid. We resolve to be kind and helpful to the women and children who have escaped and are trying to set up homes around us. We weep and wish we could do more.
In love unexpiring and sisterhood most treasured,
Unizik/Enugu, Eastern Nigeria
As a female who is Black, I march for the immediate end to racism. No more killing my people in any country—by the State or by anyone—with no repercussions! No more disparaging remarks by Trump. I just want us to be seen and treated as the human beings that we are. I am putting myself forward to sit on the National Women’s Committee in my Union. I want to teach them RC.
Birmingham, England
I march to stand alongside all the women who come forward to say no to sexual violence against women, and to step outside the internalized oppression that sits on me and has sat on my mother and her mother.
We are raised-poor Southern USer white females. The hurts we carry have led us to believe that we don’t matter, that our lives are small and powerless. This is not true, and I now know it.
Seattle, Washington, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 191, April 2018)