To the Silenced

Today is International Women's Day; a day designed to acknowledge and celebrate the many accomplishments and progress that women have made too and on this planet. It is also a day to reflect on the thousands of women around the World who still struggle to have their voices heard and their worth acknowledged.

Many countries in the World today still adhere to laws and lifestyles that oppress their feminine population. Through my work I have had the pleasure of meeting one elderly woman who spent the majority of her years oppressed under the cruel dictatorship of her male relatives predominately her husband. This individual's story begins as many of its kind do in a country divided by economic status, ethnicity, religion and dominated by poverty. Born into a family of peasant farmers with very little materialistic wealth and thus little means to provide any children with a formal education it was decreed by her father that she would recieve no formal schooling. Her early years; which today according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child should be spent in a carefree way devoted to learning and playing were spent cooking, cleaning and tending to her family's modest farm. When she became of an age her father arranged for her a marriage; as was the custom to a local boy whom he thought would be a good husband for his daughter. At this time she was given to "the local boy" in marriage and took on the responsabilities of a wife. She was too cook, clean, bare and raise for him healthy children and follow his law to the letter. During their younger married years her husband made the decision that she would work in rice patties to bring in an additional income for their household. Every day for as long as he decided she got up each morning prepared her husband breakfast and cooked lunch to ensure he was feed at noon while she was at work and than walked miles barefoot in the sweltering heat to the rice patties where she labored for long hours only to walk miles back home. Once she reached home she was expected to clean and prepare supper. Her husband eventually opened his own business and at the time it was decided that she would aide him with this (or as other members of her family have told me do most of the work while her husband reeped the economic rewards). Along with aiding her husband in his business ventures she was still expected to tend to the house, prepare food whenever her husband wanted, take care of the children and fill any other "need" her husband had whenever he wanted. She endured years of physical abuse at the hands of her husband; a bad day at work earned her a beating, one of the children misbehaved she was beaten, he consummed too much alchool she suffered for that as well. Emotional and physical abuse often go hand in hand as was the case for her; along with the random beatings he subjected her too she was also forced to endure the many other women he would bring home to their marital bed. When he was having a bad day she was called every wicked name under the sun; the only one which really affected her was "stupid". Not able to read and write due to a lack of formal schooling she has struggled with a complex her whole life; her opinon does not matter after all she can't even read. She never mentioned to him that she knew even though it was painfully obvious because keeping quite meant one less beating. Nothing moves as steadily as time and soon their children were done formal schooling, married and raising children of their own. Age was not allowed to slow her when it came to the fulfillment of her wifely duties and she was obligated to care for him until he became too ill for her to do it alone and had to turn to her children for assistance. It has only been in the later years of life that she has been free of the monster who ruled her every waking hour for years. She is only free of having him by her side but his presence and the oppression that her society deemed it appropriate for her to be subjected too at his hands she will breath her last feeling.

One of the more memorable days at work for me was when I went to visit her in her room and she was sitting looking out her window. She was obviously lost in her thoughts in a time and place where she was less than human. I sat down on her window ledge and placed my hand over hers very gentle. Her eyes opened and brimmed with tears and she squeezed my hand and said "I may not be able to read but I am not dumb"...and she is right but a lifetime of oppression will never let her really believe that or set her free.