The victimization of women and girls is one of the most common, yet least visible forms of oppression. Its effects go beyond the bruises and the fear to tear at the very fabric that holds families and communities together.
For years, Amie Kandeh endured threats and beatings at the hands of her husband. The end finally came when the man, in an alcohol-fueled rage, told her she was going to die. What makes Kandeh's story more salient is that at the same time she was being brutalized, she was counseling other women who were victims of similar abuse.
"So I had this double life," says Kandeh, the director of the Gender-Based Violence Program with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Sierra Leone.
"Of all the issues … gender-based violence is the most widespread. Sure enough, in a country like Sierra Leone, it's very extreme; it's a post-conflict situation. But rape and domestic abuse happen everywhere. They really are one of the most ubiquitous
forms of gender-based oppression."
— Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of Half the Sky
A girl in Sierra Leone
Photo by Jessica Chermayeff
Gender-based violence is one of the most common but least visible or recognized forms of oppression against women. Around the world, as many as one in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex acts or abused in some other way, most often by someone she knows, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
"Of all the issues … gender-based violence is the most widespread. Sure enough, in a country like Sierra Leone, it's very extreme, it's a post-conflict situation. But rape and domestic abuse happen everywhere," Sheryl WuDunn says. "They really are one of the most ubiquitous forms of gender-based oppression."
Gender-based violence encompasses a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual abuse of children, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, trafficking of women and girls and several harmful traditional practices like female circumcision.
The IRC says that 26 percent of the rape victims it treats in its center in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, are 11 years old or younger, journalist Nicholas Kristof wrote in an October 8, 2011, column in The New York Times that detailed his encounter with a three year-old rape victim.
"As I stood in the rape center corridor, reeling from the encounter … a four-year-old girl was brought in for treatment. She, too, turned out to have been infected with a sexually transmitted disease in the course of a rape. Also in the center that day were a 10 year-old and a 12 year-old, along with older girls," Kristof wrote.
A study by the World Health Organization, based on interviews with 24,000 women in 10 mainly developing countries, found that among women aged 15 to 49 years:
"This is not a third world, first world issue," says Zainab Salbi, co-founder and president of Women for Women International, which supports female survivors of civil strife.
"The fact that three out of five women still get abused … somehow, someway in the world, you know, shows that that fundamental respect that I just don't have the right to do, to touch her or talk to her the wrong way – it's still not there fully yet."
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/half-the-sky/gender-based-violence/
A landmark transmedia project featuring a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event (check local listings), a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two websites, educational video modules with companion text, a social media campaign supporting over 30 partner NGOs, and an impact assessment plan all inspired by Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide was filmed in 10 countries and follows Kristof, WuDunn, and celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and Olivia Wilde on a journey to tell the stories of inspiring, courageous individuals. Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls. The linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality - which needlessly claim one woman every 90 seconds - present to us the single most vital opportunity of our time: the opportunity to make a change. All over the world women are seizing this opportunity.
The Film
Coming October 1 and 2 to PBS stations nationwide
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is a four-hour PBS primetime documentary film and national broadcast event inspired by the widely acclaimed book of the same name by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
Girl at New Light Crèche in Kolkata, India
Photo by Joshua Bennett
Filmed in 10 countries, the series follows Nicholas Kristof and celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union and Olivia Wilde on a journey to tell the stories of inspiring, courageous individuals. Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls.
The linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality - which needlessly claim one woman every 90 seconds - present to us the single most vital opportunity of our time: the opportunity to make a change. All over the world women are seizing this opportunity.
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