Zimbabwean Women set example in fight for global equality
Recently I read Electing to Rape: Sexual Terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe a report from AIDS Free World, another optimistic and ambitious initiative co-founded by former UN Envoy Stephen Lewis.
Page after page, women recounted their harrowing experiences of rape and brutality. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Women with even the most distant connections to political opposition parties were targeted. I had to put it down.
Of course, this was not the first time I had heard stories of the terror women withstood in Zimbabwe. In November 2008, Crossroads’ women’s rights partners gathered for a meeting in Cape Town. For Zimbabwean women it was a respite. They spoke sombrely of the violence being waged against women and openly about fears for their own safety, even as they worked tirelessly to support individual women and to advocate for an end to the violence in their country.
So when I learned that CCI partner, the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe, had been awarded the Canadian Council for International Cooperation’s (CCIC) Betty Plewes Award (recognizing their work in advancing women’s rights), my heart sang.
Canadian Crossroads International accepted the awared on behalf of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe and all of its members at CCIC’s annual meeting in Ottawa May 27 as the National Coordinator Netsai Mushonga was unable to secure a visa to come to Canada. READ MORE
We can learn a great deal from these brave women. In the face of brutal oppression and an economic crisis, the likes of which we have never seen, they continue to work and to raise their voices.
And of course it is not just women in Zimbabwe who are targeted. In many countries where we work — Swaziland, Senegal — violence against women remains pervasive and debilitating. Around the globe, the systematic use of violence against women in an increasingly militarized world is on the rise.
That is why it is vital for those of us in the North to speak out. Not just in defence of colleagues and friends in the South, but in defence of all women.
At the widely quoted panel discussion Where is Canada’s Leadership on Women’s Rights (held May 3 on Parliament Hill with women’s rights leaders and parliamentarians of all political stripes) long time women’s rights proponent Senator Nancy Ruth offered sage advice to women’s rights advocates: “Shut the f*#! up” or risk a backlash.
Her advice, while a tad dramatic, was tactical and made with the best of intentions. But it was panelist Lydia Alpizar, Executive Director of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, simple response that stuck with me: “I know of very few rights that have been won by keeping silent,” she said. Alpizar warned Canadians that the apparent closing of democratic space to openly debate issues and advocate for rights in this country could also have serious repercussions for communities in the South, still struggling to define those spaces.
As has Alpizar noted “there are no magic bullets to achieve gender equality and women’s rights.” Interventions such as gender mainstreaming, micro-finance and quotas for women in political systems are good ideas for which women have fought. But “none of these either individually or together will necessarily empower women.”
So then what works? What should be our role?
The answer lies not just in what programs we initiate or support, but in how we do it. Our role is not to prescribe solutions to women in the South, but rather to work with them, to invest in them, to advocate for their rights and ours. From the grassroots, as illustrated by the members of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe to national and international organizations, women and women’s groups are the driving forces in the fight for equality. They are developing and implementing strategies to enable women to: live free from violence; increase their economic autonomy; assert their sexual and reproductive rights; and participate as equals in broad range of political spaces where decisions that affect their lives and communities are made.
Immediately following the discussion on Parliament Hill, our own government faced a barrage of criticism when it was revealed that more than 14 feminist organizations, including our colleagues at Match International, had recently lost federal funding and would be forced to close. Speaking in the House of Commons in defence of government cuts, the Hon. John Baird said “Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. This government is giving a record amount of funding to support women’s groups. We do have one big criteria, we want less talk and more action.”
In my experience working in women’s rights in Canada and internationally for nearly 20 years, the latter is not achieved without the former. Rights come first, programs to mitigate the impact of inequity follow. It is difficult to isolate the women’s organizations who deliver quality services, from those who demanded them in the first place.
The Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe is case in point. “During the violence we began realizing that we had to do much more in terms of peace building and in terms of intervening in the politics of the country,” Mushonga said in an interview from Zimbabwe. Women are particularly well positioned to forward positive social change, she said. While some men are still in “the fighting mood” women are invested in development and peace. Rather than leaving the public agenda to the men, women are staking out space to have their say.
While governments may be slow to recognize this critical relationship, it is meaningful to have a Canadian award that recognizes it.
