Celebrating International Day of the Girl was an amazing experience, especially because the movement and its message has grown to be very important to me. As we prepared our International Day of the Girl assembly, we read countless texts by feminist writiers and activists, such as Audre Lorde, Bonnie Thornton Dill, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz, and many others.
We met with several women, including Dr. Jessica Ringrose from the Institute of Education in London to discuss her qualitative study of children, young people, and “sexting”, Christa Calbos to learn about 10×10, a social action campaign that works to educate girls in developing nations, Mandy Van Deven to discuss women’s issues and feminism in India, and Richa Nagar, one of the authors of Playing With Fire.
Through reading these various texts and meeting various speakers in our class, we learned about the ways that women and girls are oppressed in India and around the world. This movement is both a way of celebrating the girls all around the world who work to overcome the ways that they are oppressed, and a powerful way to spread awareness of the fight for girls’ rights.
This movement strives to tackle issues of poverty, healthcare, education, gender-based violence, including rape, and sex trafficking. I have I’ve never met any of the 77.6 million girls who are currently not enrolled in school, nor have I spoken to any of the 25,000 girls who become child brides each day. However, our class has learned so much about these girls, and have had so many amazing discussions and interactions with one another and with other feminists about women’s/girl’s issues in India and around the world that I’ve developed a powerful emotional bond with these women and girls.
LREI’s Feminism class as we prepared to lead the assembly in celebration of International Day of the Girl.
Learning about intersectionality as we’ve learned about the oppression of girls has helped nurture the bond with them. The theory of intersectionality insists that all forms of oppression, such as homophobia, racism, and sexism, are not independent from one another. It examines the way that these forms of oppression connect to form a system of oppression. This interconnectedness of different forms of oppression means, as Audre Lorde states in “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions”, that “oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities” and that one “cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only.”
In addition, the theory of intersectionality claims that everyone has multiple identities, which consists of different identifiers, such as sexuality, race, gender etc. Intersectionality is used as a lens to understand how these multiple identities amalgamate to shape the whole person. Understanding the concept of intersectionality has taught me exactly what Bonnie Thornton Dill predicted it would in her Ms. Magazine article, “Intersections.“ It has allowed me to cultivate a deeper understanding of the stories of the girls we’ve come across by “fully incorporating the ideas, experiences, and critical perspectives of previously excluded groups.”
Not only has it inspired me to look at who I am, in regards to all of the different factors that I am made up of, but it has granted me “the distinctive knowledge and perspective of previously ignored groups of women” and has allowed me the opportunity to discuss and be fully aware of the ways that “experience of gender differs by race, class, and other dimensions of inequality.”
Taking a moment to touch on the issue of girl trafficking in India.
The episodes of Half the Sky that we watched also had an extremely powerful effect on me. They challenged my emotions and I often found myself in tears at one moment, and then angry in the next at the horrific capacity for cruelty that so many people have. I was particularly effected by a portion where New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof says that in places where modern conflicts have ended, “the militias stop shooting other people, but [this kind of] rape, including of young children, continues.”
Kristof’s wife and fellow journalist Sheryl WuDunn goes on to explain that “it’s not so much tolerated as it is just – it’s just people bear it.” This part made me both angry and sad. No one should have to be subjected to a world where one has to just learn to live with being violated, and where the rape of women and children is commonplace. And yet, the shocking reality is that outside of the seemingly safe confines of the bubble that is the U.S., women and girls are subjected to horrible atrocities.
As I was doing research to learn more about the International Day of the Girl and about the ways that women and girls are oppressed throughout the world, I often found myself tearing up. I had a powerful emotional response when I learned about the hardships of other girls around the world because their stories are absolutely incredible. The stories of hardships that they’ve faced are truly heartbreaking, and I am amazed by the many girls that have been able to rise up from a complex and abhorrent system of oppression, and with support from amazing people and amazing organizations, have been able to change the course of their lives and “become part of the solution” as was stated in Half the Sky.
Seeing young girls who’ve lived through such hardships smiling and happy and strong is such an incredibly beautiful thing. These are the women that Audre Lorde addresses in her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” when she writes:
“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference […] know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.”
All of the strong and amazing women we’ve spoken about, the one’s who’ve “[stood] alone”, and the one’s who’ve been “forged in the crucibles of difference” by systems of oppression have changed the way I see the world. The women we’ve read about and seen in videos have given me so much knowledge, it’s hard to believe that I once had no idea of what has been happening to women around the world.
These amazing people, such as Somaly Mam in Half the Sky who bravely and selflessly risks her life on a daily basis to save young girls from brothels, are an inspiration. I won’t ever forget the stories of their strength and determination in the face of systematic oppression. I hope that someday, when I’m an adult, I’ll be able to inspire someone the way that these women and these stories have inspired me, and to help someone the way that these women help girls every day.
These women, along with every other girl who faces the ways that women are oppressed truly deserve to be celebrated, thanked, and congratulated. The International Day of the Girl is a day to educate others about women’s and girl’s issues around the world, but it’s also a day to congratulate the fearless women who lead the movement to make the world a better place for everyone.
Our Feminism class at the end of our assembly.
