Women of Color Struggles: The Power to Change

For this week’s discussion, select 1 or 2 issues from the issues facing women globally and come up with a solution for social change. Watch this first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-lUrM-rmIE&t=12s (Links to an external site.)

Instructions:

1. Identify an issue(s) from the list below that is important to YOU, and decide on one (or two) to address. Explain why it is important to you.

2. Research the chosen issue and decide how to change or improve the situation.

• Plan an action (do we need a social movement, media campaign, protests, petitions, a collaboration between various social movements?)
• identify an end goal. What is the goal of your action? How will it change the world for the better?
• Do not forget to respond to another classmate’s post.

Around the world, women are worse positioned in social, economic, and political hierarchies. Women everywhere are more likely to experience sexual and domestic violence and less likely to influence decisions that affect their lives. Gender intersects with race, ethnicity, class, income, sexual orientation, and disability, meaning that not all women experience gender inequality in the same way and to the same degree.

• Women remain disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination, and exploitation, with more than half (50.4%) of working women in vulnerable employment. It will take another 118 years – or until 2133 – until the global pay gap between men and women is finally closed. Globally women are paid less than men. Women in most countries earn on average only 60-75% of men’s wages.
• Men own and manage just under 70% of all businesses and women sit on only 19% of board seats globally.
• Only 22 percent of all national parliamentarians are female.
• Two-thirds of the 780 million people in the world who cannot read are women.
• In Africa, 28 million girls are not in education and will never step inside a classroom.
• At least one in three women around the world have been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in their lifetime.
• It is estimated that, worldwide, one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
• Approximately 15 million adolescent girls worldwide have experienced forced sex at some point in their life.
• 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.
• 71% of human trafficking victims are women and girls.
• Globally, it is estimated that at least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some form of FGM (forced genital mutilation). In most of these countries, the majority of girls were cut before the age of 5. In some countries, this happens to up to 98% of girls.
• Between 1.5 million and 3 million girls and women die each year because of gender-based violence.
  Violence against women during or after armed conflicts has been reported in every international or non-international war-zone.
• Every day, approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
• HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age.
• It is estimated that there are 650 million women and girls in the world today who were married before age 18. Across the world, 39,000 girls become child brides every day.
• 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries, with women dying of pregnancy-related causes at the rate of one a minute.