Women's Rights Are Human Rights

What more can they want?
The privileged say
As if we have equal rights
As if we have equal pay
Old men chase us home
As we walk down the street
Old men make the womb
Public property
We have trans sisters of color
Buried in shallow graves
We have refugee sisters
Locked in a cage
They tone-police our anger
They derail and minimize
They excuse every predator
Who has endangered our lives
What more can they want?
The privileged ask
We want a foot in the door
We want a fighting chance

The Feminist Poet

Women have been mistreated since the beginning of time. Less than a century ago, women were completely subjected to housework. Apparently, anything else was seen as   Ò not the way God intended it to be Ó. They were considered a liability because of their dependence on their husbands. Am I the only one who finds that ironic? Independency wasn't even an option for them!

Over time, women started standing up for themselves, realizing their worth. Now they weren't considered liabilities anymore. Instead they were seen as “rebellious and stupid”. In my opinion though, the worst stigma surrounding women has come with the 21st century. Today, at least half of our population thinks we live in a post feminism society. If you are part of that unfortunate statistic, I'm sorry to tell you that you have been terribly misinformed.

Globally, according to the United Nations, at least one in every three women is beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime. In 2016, a UNESCO report estimated that over 130 million girls worldwide were out of school. And a campaign group called 'Girls Not Brides’ reports that each year 12 million girls are married before the age of 18.

UAE law permits domestic violence.  Article 53 of the penal code allows the imposition of “chastisement by a husband to his wife and the chastisement of minor children’’ so long as the assault does not exceed the limits of Islamic law. Marital rape is not a crime. In 2010, the Federal Supreme Court issued a ruling, citing the penal code, that sanctions husbands' beating and infliction of other forms of punishment or coercion on their wives, provided they do not leave physical marks.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in a single year. That's more than 600 women every day.

Every third woman in India suffers sexual or physical violence at home. That figure means around 20 crore women in India have experienced some form of abuse. And those are just the cases that were reported. 

Now tell me are men and women equal. 

We aren't. We never have been. But now, regardless of the numerous obstacles womankind has faced, we've shoved our foot in the door and demanded a spot on the table. It's not going to be easy to keep our place, but we need to if we can hope for a better world, where all genders are equal. 

Rhea Gupta (Checkpoint 8)
Cambridge International Foundation School
2019-2020