February 25, 2013
In 2010 The UN General Assembly created UN Women, The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, a historic step in accelerating the Organization’s goals related to meeting the needs of the women globally. To learn more go to http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/about-un-women/
In our recent elections women won a record breaking 20 seats in the US Senate in what is being heralded as the “Year of the Women,” similar to social change witnessed in the 20’s and the 60’s and casting further hope for the election of a woman to the US presidency in 2016.
In February, 2013 The US Senate passed a strong inclusive bill to reauthorize the landmark Violence Against Women Act. Please contact your representative in Congress to see that it passes in the House of representatives also! For mpre info go to http://4vawa.org/
Check out Hanna Rosin’s data on the shifting power dynamics between women and men in the global economy on her exciting TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/hanna_rosin_new_data_on_the_rise_of_women.html
Follow the work of Pulitzer award winning journalist Sherlyl Wudunn and her husband Nicolas Kristof who believe that just as slavery was the moral issue of the 19th Century, sex trafficking, gender based violence and other abuses make women’s rights the moral issue of the 21rst. Their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide chronicles women’s stories of oppression and opportunity, bearing witness to horror yet enabling us to preserve hope. You can hear Sheryl on TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_wudunn_our_century_s_greatest_injustice.html
STILL I RISE
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame – I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain – I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear – I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear – I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
~Maya Angelou