This week, I went to the premier of Mediha, a new documentary told from video diaries of a fifteen-year-old Yazidi girl from Northern Iraq. She was taken by ISIS and sold as a slave from ages ten to thirteen. She escaped and is working to bring her perpetrator to justice. It was one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen. The courage this young girl had to stand up and use her voice in a culture that completely oppresses women moved me on such a visceral level that I felt forever changed. And when the lights came up after the film, I remembered Oprah once saying, “If you’re a woman born in America, you’re the luckiest woman in the world.” And I thought, “that’s true!”.
Now, I question that word “luck”. It’s not actually “luck” that made America a place where women can work, vote, and have choices over their own lives. It came from the blood, sweat, and tears of American women that came before us. Women not unlike Mediha who put their lives on the line and suffered extreme abuse at the hands of men who wanted to keep them as their property.
Today, as an American woman, I believe we have a bigger obligation to push for full equality. After all, right now, we do live in a democracy where we have the right to vote, protest, and speak our minds. And if we don’t utilize these things now, they can be stripped from us. Just as our full body autonomy was stripped from us less than two years ago. We are frogs in a pot and the water is getting warmer. Let’s not become Handmaid’s Tale.
Here's some reasons to get inspired or pissed-off, which is sometimes the same thing:
1. Women can no longer freely travel in Texas
2. Among wealthy nations, US has the highest rate of maternal mortality
3. 75% of all unpaid care work is carried out by women and girls
And, here’s eight ways you can be a women’s rights advocate today and every day.
I know it’s hard to find the time to fight for equality when you’re raising kids, working jobs, building careers, and trying to maintain a fulfilling lifestyle. But we’re Moms. We’re good at multi-tasking. And, we have a lot of power if we work together.
Plus, what are we going to say to our daughters when they grow up in a nation where they have less rights than we did? How are we going to teach our sons that women are equal when they grow up in a society that tells them differently?
Among Other Things was started as a place for Moms to share ideas, vent about their struggles, and find solutions to their own inequity. Because we’re almost a quarter of a century into a new millennium, yet we’re going backwards on women’s rights in America.
Let’s create an America that can be a beacon for girls like Mediha. A place for her to come and be heard. Where we are the example for other cultures to change.
How can Among Other Things fight for women’s rights? Got ideas? Email us at AmongOtherThingsNYC@gmail.com. And let us know if you would like to come to one of our events in NYC.