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A Radical Proposal: Fighting for Women and Girls

06/13/2010

Observations of grassroots activist Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends of the UNFPA

What follows is a radical proposal from a grassroots activist who wants to see a whole new framework for global health. It was written because the Global Health Council's conference is going to emphasize the health related Millennium Development Goals and the Women Deliver Conference has again brought world attention to the subject of maternal mortality with a heavy emphasis on family planning as a great saver of both women's and children's lives.

In much of the world, if you are born a girl, there is often commiseration instead of celebration at your birth. Or earlier you may have been aborted for your gender or your life may be purposefully snuffed out in your first days of life. In your first five years, you may die of simple neglect. There are between 60 and 100 million of you missing in the world today simply because of your gender. Sheesh!

And yet, no human being has ever lived who has not come from the womb of a woman. Right now on this earth, 6.8 billion people are living because a woman did something quite brave. She carried a pregnancy to term. That's why you are reading this!

So from a biological scientific point of view, the women of the world are la crème de la crème. But at the present time individuals, governments, religions, cultures and customs do not accord them full equality. In fact, gender inequality is the moral scourge of the age, so huge in its implications that it is almost too big to see, almost invisible.

I have with me a little writing booklet from a United Nations Population Fund sponsored elementary school in Senegal. The times tables are on the back and on the front, in French, this message "Little girls have as much right to food, education, and health care as little boys." We should all be in a state of utter disbelief that such a thing needs to be said.

We all know that often girls and women eat last and least. We all know that little girls often do not have equal opportunity to attend school. Equality of educational opportunity is a primary component of Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3. Although they speak of education, they are much related to health. Education and health go together. What if the world committed itself to the equivalent of a high school education for every girl? If available for girls and women, it would carry over to boys and men. It would be an immeasurable contribution to health.

What if every girl and woman on the planet were given access to health? For instance what if every baby were more or less guaranteed a birth weight of 7 to 8 pounds and to be AIDS-free? That would give every baby a good start. Imagine the revolution in health that this guarantee would imply. It would imply a world commitment to everything contained in the field of reproductive health, and I mean EVERYTHING!

And yes, let's do talk about the FP word i.e. Family Planning. If you look up www.un.org/millenniumgoals and click on number 5, the last line of target two says: "An unmet need for family planning undermines the achievement of several other goals." I think it undermines all of the MDGs, every single one. But family planning is controversial. When I see the opposition to family planning, let alone to legal abortion, on the part of the religious right in this country I see mind-boggling hypocrisy. They all use family planning. Family planning equals health. With millions of women unable to be the decision makers when it comes to sexual activity, family planning is the crucial element for women's empowerment. It allows women and girls to go to school, to learn, and to earn both money and respect and to play an active role in civil society. The health benefits of family planning for people, the planet, and peace are so vast as to be almost invisible.

A report, recently released by the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) documents the enormous and synergistic benefits that would come from increasing the global investment in both family planning services and pregnancy related and newborn care. In short 70 percent of maternal deaths and 44 percent of infant deaths could be prevented.

As an added bonus, the huge toll of death and disability from unsafe abortion could be minimized. The fact that abortion remains illegal especially in the developing world results from women's disempowerment politically and culturally. Gender inequality is the underlying reason that universal access to family planning and access to safe abortion have not been realized.

We must talk a little about the issue of human population. The basic reason why there are 6.8 billion of us now is that "making babies" is enjoyable and a natural human activity. Raising children is a much desired and rewarding activity for most people. But does the global health community know that between 80 and 85 million people are added each year to the planet's population, almost all of this growth coming in the poorest countries where women's status is universally low? Is there cause and effect here? Is the global health community going to be able to take care of 9.1 billion people by 2050? I don't think so.

I quote Stephen Lewis, former U.N. special envoy to Africa for AIDS, "I challenge you to enter the fray against gender inequality. There is no more honorable or productive calling. There is nothing of greater import in this world. All roads lead from women to social change."

I say, "When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world." That is my radical grassroots proposal: that the peoples of the world commit in every way imaginable to women's health and empowerment and equality. The pay-off would be incalculable for people (including the global health community), the planet and peace.

At the 2007 Women Deliver conference in London, the Lancet put out a special edition with this message on the front "Since the human race began, women have delivered for society. It is time now for the world to deliver for women." I along with thousands of others are going to reiterated this at Women Deliver and will do so again this week at the Global Health Council conference.

We need people, men and women together, who will DELIVER for women, who will climb over the barricades, in a non-violent struggle for enormous change. We have to make it happen. We need a peaceful, purposeful, stubborn and obstinate REVOLUTION!

@conference

Jane Roberts is an avid attendee of the Global Health Council conference. She will be leading a "peaceful, purposeful, stubborn and obstinate revolution" for women's health.

Jane Roberts is cofounder of 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund.