Western Women Needed To Save The World
March 7, 2010
The world will be saved by the Western Women
~ Dalia Lama
I hope more Western women will come to consciousness by learning and
appreciating our history, understanding where we are today globally
(conditions girls and women live in around the world-100 million women
and girls are missing!), where we need to go and who we need to be to
save the world. I feel disheartened when I see so many of us continue
to give up our last names in marriage and give our children our
husband’s name, call ourselves girls when we’re well beyond childhood,
call girls and women sluts and the guys, the guys, and continue to
subordinate ourselves. I feel totally heartened when I read about women
around the globe, not the leaders of nations, but the women in the
trenches who are saying no to genital mutilation, who are building
schools for girls and hospitals for women who otherwise would die in
childbirth, who are prosecuting their rapists in a culture where it is
unheard of to do so, saying no to arranged marriages that are forced
upon them oftentimes by rape, and who are stopping girls from being
sold into slavery and brothels by ensuring education and healthcare for
girls. Gerda Lerner asks what could explain women holding onto our
subordination and ‘upholding the patriarchal system that continues to
subordinate us’. Is it fear of violence? Is it we are busy working,
caregiving, producing and reproducing? I suspect both and as we come
into greater consciousness, we will see, yes in fact we can and must
save the world. It is only through love and care the world can be
saved. Western Women with greater resources and access to them are a
powerful force to be reckoned with, once we feel empowered to be that
force.
