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This week really our final week of homework and
reading before we have a week of reflection and giving
folks a chance to catch up on writing and,
and, and, and going back over the lectures and reading.
This final week is focused on women, education, and social change.
It's an important week because I think we, we have to remember, and
we, we've seen this echoes of this throughout the course.
We have to remember that gender is
a category that makes an enormous difference whenever
we're talking about any of the major global
challenges that we've been discussing in this class.
Gender matters when you're talking about poverty.
Gender matters when you're talking about health and disease.
Gender matters when you're talking about climate change.
These global challenges affect men and women differently.
What we see in the reading for this week is that paying
attention to gender is going to be helpful to men and women.
Paying attention to gender, having a feminist approach to economic
development and social, political development, having a
feminist approach to those things will benefit everyone and if
one doesn't pay attention to gender, it's actually going to hurt everyone.
Because women have such an important role
to play in meeting these global challenges.
So we'll, we'll start off just really reviewing.
I like to just review some of the basic facts about The
discrimination against women in various parts of the world, and the the
differential experience or the different experiences that men and women have.
We could start off with literacy. Over 80%
of adult men, achieve literacy, but it's, it's
closer to, 2 3rds for women in
low, what's called, low human development countries it's, it's, it's even worse.
It's over 50% for men, and just over a third for women.
The primary school experiences again, many more men
have access to education at, at primary levels than girls
do and the differences get even greater
in developing countries when you move on to secondary and tertiary education.
In terms of gross national product a measure that's
important although, as we'll see this week, it shouldn't
be overused. Men control almost twice as much of gross
national pro, product as women in medium-developed countries.
And it really can get worse in in the developing world.
We know that women experience crime very differently than men,
and we know that across the world, domestic violence and rape is an
enormous problem changing the life experiences for all women.
And not just for the victims of those crimes.
But for women who feel they have to change their behavior so as not to
become a victim of crime. So the lived experiences
for men and women across the world. Are quite different,
and in the countries that are the most vulnerable to
climate change, to health issues, to extreme
poverty the, the vulnerability is heightened for women.
The vulnerability is greater for women and recognizing that actually allows us to
take steps to address women's need for a human and economic development.
And when we do that, that has a strong reverberation.
Across the society affecting both men and women boys and girls.
>> I'm so pleased to be here with
Marian Pearl, managing director of Chime for Changes storytelling
platform, and life long passionate advocate for the right
of girls and women to tell their own stories.
So, one of the recurring themes that we've been hearing over
the last two days is how girls and women are key
to progress and to economic development. But as recently as two years
ago, only 6% of all funding went into the hands of girls and women.
That's 6%.
So, a couple of us over at Women Delivered decided to
take the matter into our own hands, and do something about it.
And we started to build a crowd funding platform.
A place where girls and
women, working on the front lines for justice,
could basically tell their stories in their own
words, share their work, and find funding for
their projects from a new, online, global audience.
Mary Anne we hear all the time about sharing stories in your
own words, and, what, why is it more than a cat, catchphrase?
>> Well, I think for me, Can you hear me?
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
Okay.
Hi everyone and for first of all. I am very happy to be here.
And I, I am happy, thank you, for inviting me because we, we
hear these words, you know of about women sharing their stories in their own
words and to me, it means more than a catchphrase, because
when you think about it, having a story, for me it's it, it's a basic human right.
Because as an individual, you need a story, you know.
Having a story, belonging to a family.
Belonging to a country belonging to, to a story is part of your integrity.
Is a part of your, your dignity.
And the first thing you did when you
colonize a country is deprive them of a story.
Thats how you control people.
And if you think about it the way the way we've been taught history
women were not part of the story.
And it's Virginia Woolf who wrote, I love this quote,
she said for most of history anonymous was a woman.
You know, and, and that's pretty much it.
And nobody, none of us has been taught history from the perspective of women.
Women were an afterthought of history.
They're like irrelevant in the account of the human experience.
So it's, it's quite a serious topic, you know,
of depriving people of their hist, of their stories.
Also depriving them of their ability to
control their own lives and to make decisions.
And that brings me to my second point which is you know.
We, we've all, you know, constantly been told stories, and everyone tells stories.
Politicians tell stories.
If you want to start a war or end a war you
have to tell a story to justify what you are going to do.
The media tells us stories all the time.
Religions tells a story, and all those stories
justify why we making the, you know, the decisions
we making, and how we're going to live accordingly.
So having the right to tell your story is also having the
right to, to, to steer the world in, in a certain way.
And so, you know, being able to have your own narrative, to have your own
perspective and your own ana, analysis on what's going on is also your right to,
to be able to make decisions and, and, and gear the world in certain ways.
So, we know of I mean my opinion is that
women's right is really about power it's about sharing power.
At the end of the day that's what its all about and
the storytelling part is absolutely crucial when it comes to sharing power.
And the third, you know, important point for me is
that those stories, you know, if they've never been told
imagine how much there is to say and how, you know, like the
I've been reporting a lot about women and that brought me to many many
countries where women had never told their stories and they not only
had you know, the right to do so but what they had to say was mesmerizing.
And when I go to different international you know,
gatherings and people say oh, how do we change the world, how do
we do this, and I listen to these women, they have the answers.
They've walked the walk, they have the experience, an incredible wealth
of knowledge they know the context, they know the people they're
dealing with, they know what justice is all about, and so
we need to listen to them just because we need the solutions.
And now obviously, we also have the tools to
do that, which I know, I'm turning the microphone back
to you because you are Mrs. Tool. And and, but that's basically why.
>> [LAUGH] Hopefully not a tool [LAUGH] This is basically why I
think story-telling is more than just, you know, a just a catchphrase.
>> [LAUGH] Thank you so much [COUGH] so, Marian is right, we do have the tools.
And we think of the internet basically as the greatest blank cheque ever written.
So we decided to take matters
into our hands and to build a crowdfunding platform and
we were really energized by three principles in building it.
The first principle is that it's all about listening to girls and
women as Marion said, they are agents of change in their own lives.
And they know how to make the change, but
of course they need funds in order to do it.
Secondly, we wanted to build something that really engaged
with men.
Because frankly, we just won't make enough progress if
men are not going to stand with us on our issues.
And lastly, and very importantly to us as individuals, we really
wanted to be able to choose exactly where our money went.
Nobody needs to make those decisions for us anymore.
And 100% of our donations wanted to go
straight to the ground, straight to girls and women.
So we launched Catapult with some wonderful grassroots partners.
This is Roots of Health in the
Philippines, and they provide family planning services
in an area where everyone was pregnant, and you couldn't see any flat bellies.
They also teach sex, sex education in schools.
They gave us our first fully funded project.
There they are the staff of Roots
of Health, they're lovely.
[SOUND] And the great thing is the story doesn't end
there, because we're a crowdfunding platform they are now reporting
back to all of their online supporters, telling them how
the progress is going, what they were able to achieve.
You can see it was a very small project,
but they achieved real, measurable impact for their communities.
And these very small projects that we started out
with, actually served to attract some really cool
and quite big partners including Chime For Change which
is a, a new initiative, a major new
initiative founded by Gucci to empower girls and women.
And Chime for Change, the centerpiece of Chime for Change.
I'm going to go really fast actually though.
So we can show you a quick video.
But the Centerpiece for Chime for Change was a concert.
It was the first global concert for girls and women.
Beyonce and Heim, Florence and the Machine.
And there were 50,000 concert goers, all of whom, because
of crowdfunding, got to choose exactly where their money would go.
And because of this partnership, a really small organization like ours
was able to have major significant impact in our first year.
And also major new
audiences really engaging with all of the issues
that face girls and women around the world.
So we're feeling really great about this.
>> I just want to say that you know that
it was really, I went to the concert and
[UNKNOWN] was there too and what was really amazing
is that people you know we're going to a concert.
They were having fun.
And, and it was young, young a lot of young crowd.
They're coming with their fathers, coming with their brother, kids,
and you know, everybody felt great about celebrating helping women in the world.
And you felt like the, you know, the face of
development, of you know, international cooporation was changing and was cool.
You know, in the world, it was [CROSSTALK] changing
and it was you know, and everybody felt good about
both celebrating and helping and having their money going
straight to org, to organization that would also tell them,
you know, how, how they were doing and, and
this connection was incredible and it was tangible as well.
>> So actually, we're going to end with some of just, very briefly, a couple
of the projects that fully funded thanks
to Chime for Change, crowdfunded by Catapult.
And they'll tell it in their own voices.
>> Together through an innovative partnership we've crowdfunded more
than 250 projects in 81 countries.
>> My name is [UNKNOWN] and I'm 16 years old.
I've been leading a girls leadership summer camp for the past three weeks.
Today, we had each girl give a speech
as though she was running for president of Afghanistan.
>> Hello, my name is Arsa Solinie, and I am running for president of Afghanistan.
If you choose to elect me, some of
the things that I will support include the biggest
unsolved issue in our country, women's rights.
>> When I joined this program, I learned that we
can actually do something about it that we can actually help.
These girls, in the future, they can become something really great.
>> We're supporting innovation and creativity.
>> My name is Emily May, I'm co-founder of
Hollaback, and we made an app to end street harassment.
You can't say that street harassment doesn't matter.
When you look at that map and you see the extent to which
it's happening on our streets and in our communities.
Movements have always started because people tell their stories and this
app is just one more way that people can tell their stories.
So we can change the culture, by changing the narrative.
And what we hope is that ultimately we'll live in a world where there's no dots.
Then I'll retire, and go to a beach and drink a margarita [LAUGH].
>> It's all about listening to girls and women.
They know how to create change.
>> We are fighting for the right to be educated.
>> We are elevating the next generation of women leaders.
>> We are transforming lesbian and bi-sexual women's lives in Sri Lanka.
>> > We're empowering women to [UNKNOWN] pregnancies.
>> We're bringing solar lighting to women and their families.
>> Your helping secure land rights for the women around the world.
>> We are providing safe spaces for girls in
Haiti We are imploring communities to lead their own development
>> By helping HIV positive women and children.
>> We are saving
100s of young babies. >> We are supporting the African woman.
>> We are attacking sex trafficking.
>> We are planning an end to gender based violence.
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>> Thank you. [NOISE].
One of the most dramatic statements of paying attention
to gender in terms of thinking about economic and human
development was made by Amartya Sen, who's the author of one
of the texts you're reading this week. Amartya
Sen an, an economist and really philosopher and, and, and critic
who in 1990 published an essay on on the missing women, as he called it.
He argued that since the survival rates for women, are greater than men
when you see, demographically, that a society has significantly
more men than women, that is the result of actions, he argued, that cut
the lives short of women or cut the lives short of girls.
and, and, and, we don't perhaps see this action
except in the demographics in other words in,
in without prejudice you
would have about 101 Women, for every 100 men.
Given the, survival rates of, of uh,men and women across
the road world, and in industrialized countries you see
rates like that. But in much of the developing world and he
focused on Asia, South Asia and and China.
You see 93 women or, or so, for every hundred men.
And Sen asked himself, what could be the cause of that.
And he argued that the cause was that female fetuses
were being aborted. And and girls were not
cared for in the same way that boys are cared for so that they die off
more often. They never reach adulthood
because of prejudice. And so he argued
that in 1990, there were over 100,000,000 missing women in Asia.
And and this was a dramatic concretization
of the effects of prejudice. And economists and demographers have gone
back over this, and there were some arguments about whether certain diseases
might be in play, but still today, Sen's thesis stands.
We see the effect of gender discrimination.
Because we see there are girls who are just who die before reaching adulthood or
who are never born because of technology today allows families to find out the
sex of of the, the baby to come. And that there is a tendency
in great parts of the world. To selectively choose for male children.
I would just give you a quote from
Sen, from a recent 2013 reflection on missing women.
Sen writes, A distressing aspect of gender bias in India
that shows little sign of going away is the preference
for boys over girls.
One of the most pernicious effects of this pro-male bias
is the relatively higher mortality rates of girls compared with boys.
Not because girls are killed.
But mainly because of the quiet violence of the neglect of their health
and illness in comparison with the attention that male children receive.
Notice that phrase quiet violence that's what Sen put
his fing, fingers on in, in his demographic studies.
Studies have shown he writes that male priority in care continues for adults as
well as children, raising the mortality rates
of adult women above those of adult men.
So in West Asia and North Africa in South Asia, in especially
India and, and in, in, East Asia, especially in China, you see
this very dramatically and for Sen extraordinarily
sad and challenging manifestation of quiet gender violence.
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