Soroptimist International – A Global Voice for Women

Soroptimist International – A Global Voice for Women: Lifting Women from Poverty Through Lifelong Learning.

Presenters: 

Mariet Verhoef-Cohen, President.

Elizabeth Nyadwe, Vice President Advocacy. 

Hafdis Karlsdóttir, President’s Appeal Chair.

Soroptimist International’s aim is to educate, empower and enable women all over the world and ensure that their voices are being heard. SI have a network of clubs in 122 countries, with each club administering their own projects. Projects that were highlighted were educational programs in Nepal with focus on female leadership, women’s groups, gender equality training, menstruation hygiene, emotional healing, and more. The STEM field in the UK is another project where Soroptimist International encourages girls to pursue a career within engineering, math and technology. 

Long Life Learning for Women is an important project led by Soroptimist International Europe (SIE). Three projects were highlighted involving young women who were empowered in the work field in Italy and Turkey. Female prisoners got work training while in prison, while another project provided job placements for women who had never worked before.

Two other projects that have an ongoing education component is the SPOT project in Malaysia and the Ger project in Mongolia. The SPOT project seeks to fill gaps in Malaysia’s sexual health and education of young people, especially young girls. Despite over 18,600 cases of underage pregnancies per year there is no formal sexual health and education program in Malaysia. The Ger project enables women to grow their own fruit and vegetables and be self-sustainable.

Women, Water and Leadership is a program where women learn how to store, obtain, irrigate, plant, sell their products and manage their business. By managing water resources, and learning water leadership, women gain social and political power.

For more information about SI's work, please visit their website:  https://www.soroptimist.org/

Real men are allowed to cry

Amongst a conference bustling with thousands of women debating about female struggles amongst other women, it was more than refreshing to assume a different perspective in the session, “Real Men Do Not Hurt Others: Ending Sexual and Gender Based Violence by Working with Men and Boys on Positive/Transformative Masculinities”, where I was greeted by an enthusiastic all-male panel. It was both a comforting and morale boosting experience for all the women in the room to be reassured that they are not fighting the feminist fight alone, but rather backed by the strength and support of many influential men also devoted to their cause.

Panelists included a president of a Canadian-based NGO focused on youth empowerment and violence prevention, a South African minister raised by a single-father, and an English-Anglican priest working for Christian Aid International. Together, these men from colored backgrounds all agreed that a major underlying threat to women’s empowerment is the way in which the idea of ‘masculinity’ is socialized in society. Universally, men are expected to uphold a degree of masculinity that is characterized as being successful in their finances and careers, emotionally and physically strong, and exercising power and dominance in whatever they do. Images of these ideals are inescapable, persisting in traditional family dynamics, societal judgments, and media. Many times, as we are familiar, these pressures of socialization initiate a need that men experience to display, or prove their masculinity to others when they feel as though they are frustrated, vulnerable, or being challenged - which often results in aggression towards others, especially women and girls in their lives.

Therefore, the panelists argued, women will never be able to be fully empowered until this harmful, discriminatory concept of masculinity is broken down. With this understanding, it is men too that need to be targeted through education and empowerment in a movement towards an equal society. Specifically, we need to transform the definition of what it means to be a “real man” into a concept that acknowledges and accepts men’s ability to feel, empathize, lose, and cry, to ultimately delineate the idea of masculinity and domination. The strength associated with masculinity should be interpreted as a strength to love, care, help, and protect rather than hurt. We also need to recognize that while striving for positions of leadership and power, whether official (president of a company) or unofficial (patriarch of a household) is natural, that it no longer becomes a positive attribute when such power is used to injure, hurt, or undermine the rights of others – and be able to identify when such abuse of power is occurring. In this way, these panelists insist that gender issues are not solely about women, but also involve and affect everyone. Not only will achieving gender equality help women escape societal oppression and domestic violence, it will also save many male lives, such as the seven men for every one women who die a violent death in an attempt to defend their “alpha-male” qualities. 

Organizations such as NGOs have the power to bring together men, women, boys and girls from around the world and unite them under the universally beneficial goal of challenging dominant patriarchy. This can be done through empowerment of both sexes by raising the self-esteem of both men and women to be comfortable in challenging gender-norms and standing up to defend their individual feelings, opinions, and societal roles regardless of their biological sex. Camaraderie, rather than competition, should be the desired relationship amongst males and respect, rather than control, should be the desired relationship between males and females. While feminism roots itself in female empowerment, this socially transformative goal cannot be achieved without willing collaboration between both sexes - for if the socialization of masculinity continues to “project a fragile male ego, and women continue to submit themselves to protecting this ego”, this oppressive system will remain unbroken.  

Is all we need a little more justice?

In a panel sponsored by Crossroads International and Women in Law and Development in Africa, a series of women representatives from Togo, Swaziland, and Ghana gathered together to discuss “Decreasing Violence against Women through Access to Justice” in their different contexts. Agreeing that all women’s organizations have a unifying goal of violence prevention and obtainment of equal rights, the women on this panel aimed at opening women’s access to justice in their countries, specifically by the passing of empowering legislation and the insurance of its implementation on the ground. And, in order to do so, these women shared how their organizations strive to strike a balance of working with both government and civil society through gendered perspectives in order to promote women’s empowerment from the grassroots level up.

In order to set the stage, panelists from Togo, Swaziland, and Ghana explained the social and legal climate surrounding women’s issues in their country. In Togo, 42% of married women are subjected to physical and/or psychological violence, and these victims are left unsupported without the backing of the law. While a ‘family code’ exists within the current legal framework of the nation, this code is against discriminatory treatment in general – but not specific to women and girls. Without this specificity, perpetrators abusing women and girls remain unpunished and unaccountable for their actions and their actions’ consequences. This lack of justice and accountability is exacerbated by a disorganized national police force that does not have precedents or protocols established for properly handling cases of violence against women, leaving many abusive situations inadequately addressed. 

In Swaziland, legislation against gender-based violence does in fact exist, however its writing is archaic, dating back between the years 1880 – 1920 and has not evolved to address the threats and dangers that women face in modern day. For instance, violation of a women through anal penetration or penetration with an object is not mentioned under the law, and is regularly considered a simple assault through the eyes of the court. Magnifying this problem is Swaziland’s monarchical system of government that allows the nation’s King to veto any bill that he does not see fit, such as he did with recent legislation designed to protect women in both public and domestic spheres in modern day.

Prior to the passing of any legislation in Ghana, one out of every three women in the country was physically abused and one out of every five women in the country was psychologically abused. Now however, Ghana can serve as a slightly more positive example, boasting quite progressive anti-violence laws for their region, the most recent passed in 2007. Nevertheless, Ghanaians are not immune to the aforementioned obstacles of their region, as demonstrated by the seven-year long struggle it took for such legislation to be passed. Additionally, it is important to note that the act of passing legislation does not automatically translate to the adoption of such practices on the ground, as many Ghanaians continue to struggle unaware of the law or unsure of how to properly use it.

Therefore, while these women interestingly represented three different organizations hailing from experiences in three different nations, the synchrony of their underlying fights and aspirations was striking. The whole panel agreed that the struggle to protect women against instances of violence and to open their access to the justice system is an ongoing, uphill battle against the region’s inflexible customs of patriarchy that are so deeply embedded in their legal and social systems. The panel also believed that “advocacy, advocacy, advocacy” was the solution to overcoming these barriers. Firstly, the panel wants to use advocacy to target the way that people think, challenging their mentality that domestic violence should be kept in the secrecy of the domestic sphere, and hope to raise awareness that such abuse is not a family issue to be dealt with privately, but a societal issue that should be fought against publically and without stigma. From this, the hope is that all those in the region will begin to take issues of domestic violence seriously, both personally as well as legally, with the ultimate goal that all forms of domestic violence should and will be criminalized and persecuted in the future.