We are experiencing a dramatic cultural change throughout the world. Daughters rather than sons are becoming the embodiment of hope for a more sustainable future. Power dynamics are rapidly shifting. Possessing a different skill set, women are on the rise in the new global economy. According to TED lecturer, Hanna Rosin girls learn English quicker, complete college degrees faster and are often more successful in small business ventures. Yet, there remains a dark underside to the global rise of women, namely the violence perpetrated against them.
Badri Sing Pandey believed in his 23-year-old daughter, Jyoti, and the power of her bright future. He encouraged her to attend college, sold his family’s ancestral rural lands in Northern India to cover the cost of her education and moved the family to the capital, Delhi. Jyoti was her family’s hope for a more sustainable future.
In December 2012, Jyoti and her friend were discussing a film they had just seen as they entered a bus to get home. Within minutes, Jyoti and her friend were assaulted by five men. As she lay unconscious, the assailants brutally gang raped her using a metal rod that penetrated her intestines. The bus driver continued to drive through the city, fully aware of and complicit in the crime. The darkened windows of the bus allowed the terror onboard to go unseen. When the assailants were finished they threw the couple out onto the road, bleeding, broken and naked. Jyoti Singh Pandey died two weeks later from the horrific injuries that she sustained.
Malalai Yousafzai, now 15, recently underwent her second brain surgery after being shot in the head by the Taliban because of her outspoken promotion of girl’s education in Pakistan, a significant steeping stone to economic and cultural change. Malalai has been writing about women’s rights since she was 11. Her blog Diary of A Pakistani Schoolgirl was picked up by the BBC. Inspired by the legacy that belongs to her name, she refused to remain silent about the ongoing brutality against women by the extremist factions in her homeland. She shares her name with Malalai of Maiwand, a “Joan of Arc”, who fought on horseback against the British in 1880, and in a more contemporary sense with Malalai Joya, the youngest woman ever to be elected to the Afghan Parliament. Malalai Joya risked her life daily to teach literacy in the Taliban stronghold of Herat and who lived with ongoing threats of assassination from Afghan warlords under Karzei’s presidency.
Ama Adhe was arrested in 1957 in Kham, an eastern province of Tibet that took the brunt of the Chinese invasion. The Khampo are a brave and fierce people and Ama is no exception; after 27 years in prison, she was the lone survivor among the women she was imprisoned with. They were beaten, starved, deprived of water, raped and left to hang from the ceiling over flames. Two years ago, I listened to the heartbreaking account of a young former Tibetan Buddhist nun who was sexually tortured in prison, still a common fate for Tibetan women in Chinese prisons, regardless of international torture treaties. Rape is a weapon of war.
In our coming film, The Counter Revolutionary, Ama tells us, “I have faced the suffering of hell but still I am alive. At 85, I have reached an age between the living and the dead. I am speaking on behalf of those who died.” Ama believes that she survived in order to tell her story, so the world will bear witness.
We might imagine that these kinds of violations only happen in other countries, far away. Yet the events in Steubenville, Ohio last August suggest otherwise, when high school football players repeatedly raped an unconscious 16-year-old girl who had been rendered helpless by alcohol or date rape drugs and dragged by her wrists and ankles from party to party while others watched. No one stopped the violation and few came forward to testify.
How do we register the violence against women on conservative talk shows, perhaps our own version of extremist factions? Is it a form of abuse when, for example, Rush Limbaugh calls Sandra Fluke a “slut” on the air? What is happening when popular Fox news guest Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson contends that allowing women to vote has put the “U.S. on a pathway to destruction.”? Is violence against women linked to the fear of women’s empowerment? How do we successfully co-create a world where male power is not gauged by its capacity to suppress the rights of women? How do we shift to a deep and abiding knowledge that, to violate even just one woman, is to violate our future? Attachment research shows us that unresolved trauma casts a long shadow, even onto the next generation.
There is a global momentum to stop violence against women and girls. What makes Jyoti’s story so powerful is the global outcry that followed her violation, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in demonstrations, even before her death. They protested against the rapists as well as the police and politicians whose complacency condones and colludes with rape. In India, the victims’ names are silenced so as not to shame the family, yet Badri Singh, Jyoti’s father, released her name – Jyoti Singh Pandey – to the world saying, ”Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived their attacks. They will find strength by my daughter.” Jyoti did not remain silent, she believed her voice could make a difference and testified as she was dying.
The global outcry following the events of Malalai Yousafzi’s story highlights the vital importance of advancing women’s rights to education, voting and employment, and underlines the increasing global awareness that women’s rights are vital ingredients for a sustainable world. There is lots of work to do.
I had the honor of interviewing Malalai Joya several years ago. We talked about moral courage. She did not see that what she did, teaching literacy in Afghanistan, advocating women’s rights in the face of the Taliban, or running a wildly successful political campaign against warlords was particularly brave, just what needed to be done. I asked her if she thought that one day she would be killed by the extremists she fought against. She smiled and said, “They may destroy a thousand flowers, but they cannot stop the spring.”
It is a legacy that leaves much suffering to heal, much to fight for, and yet much to be hopeful about. Mother Theresa was asked once about how to work with such overwhelming circumstance amidst the devastation of Calcutta, she replied, “Just begin…pick up one child.” We begin where we are. We hope you will join us in the work of deepening awareness, healing trauma and advocating for change…Just begin…