Get educated about violence against women

(Disclaimer: Sorry this post is so late, I’ve been sick and asleep and on all sorts of meds all weekend).

This weekend was Amnesty International’s awesome Violence Against Women Awareness week. I attended two events – a panel featuring All Girls Allowed, First Step, and World Hope International. The other event I attended was a talk with journalist Rana Husseini, who has devoted much of her life journalistic career to uncovering the truth surrounding honor killings in her home country of Jordan (and whose closing words were the inspiration for this post’s title — “education, education, education”). All of these are fantastic issues to raise awareness about, and I know there are some who don’t know what they are. What I want to focus on today, though, is what All Girls Allowed aims to raise awareness of – the one-child policy in China and how it hurts women, especially, but also the Chinese population as a whole.

The one-child policy, in a nutshell, is a law that limits families to having only one child. Since boys are traditionally preferred over girls, in China, this has led to a major gender imbalance (“By 2020, the Chinese government estimates that there will be at least 30 million men of marriageable age that may be unable to find a spouse.” – AGA), caused by infanticide against girls, abandonment of girls, and forced abortions. I’m going to take a second to highlight the difference between being pro-choice and “pro-abortion” as the anti-choice movement calls it. Being pro-choice means that you support a woman’s bodily autonomy, it does not mean supporting forced abortions. Forced does not equal choice.

That video, shown at the panel by All Girls Allowed’s Tessa Dale, shows the harrowing ordeal one Chinese woman was forced to go through — the government made her have an abortion after eight months, because the government deemed her pregnancy illegal.  Along with forced abortions come other disgusting violations of women’s rights and privacy. For example, according to AGA, rural women’s vaginas are routinely checked to ensure that they have not been pregnant recently. Routine. Vagina. Checks. Is it any surprise that China is the only country in the world in which numbers of female suicide outrank numbers of male suicide?

At the panel, Dale suggested a few courses of action that people who are concerned about the one-child policy can take. One was as simple as telling two people you know about it, and educating them. Another was starting an All Girls Allowed chapter here at JMU. You can sign their petition online (which I have linked for you!) And you can check out the Mobilize section of their website for more ideas. Also, they have awesome silly bandz.

Edited at 10:24 p.m. on Nov 16. to correct Dale’s name.