Are we there yet?

On Oct. 27, a 13-year-old girl was stoned to death in Somalia by 50 adult men in a stadium of 1,000 spectators. Her crime, if indeed a child can be capable of committing one, was being raped by three men. Under fundamentalist interpretations of Sharia, or Islamic law, being raped constitutes adultery – a crime is punishable by death.

The law is actually quite exact, even specifying the dimensions of the stones in question to prevent death from coming too quickly as a result of a well-aimed blow from a large stone.

In this case, the child was buried to her waist, and nurses were called upon periodically to check whether she was still alive. With each answer in the affirmative, the stoning continued. After several excruciatingly long minutes of torture, she died, her death caused by severe blunt force trauma to the head.

Her name was Aisha.

This event is often on my mind, but was at the forefront of my attention Sunday, International Women’s Day. Originally a holiday akin to Mother’s Day, celebrated with the giving of flowers and gifts to mothers, grandmothers and wives, International Women’s Day is now a catalyst for changing the lives of women around the world.
American women have much to fight for.

We don’t earn equal pay for equal work, our reproductive rights are continually under attack, and we are subjected to a host of double-standards, glass ceilings and routine objectification.

These issues are nontrivial and require our attention and vigilance to overcome. But on International Women’s Day, I didn’t think about our troubles.

I thought about the people who have gone before, my own mother and grandmothers and thousands of other mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers) who fought for the rights I enjoy today. The fact that I can vote, wear pants, keep my own bank account, go to college and have a career (and a family too, if I want) are all the result of efforts of millions of people throughout our country’s history. On International Women’s Day, I am especially thankful.

I also thought about Aisha.

Around the world, billions of women are truly second-class citizens. Denied access to legislative rights and primary education, let alone secondary or college, many are also subjected to socially prescribed and endorsed violence.

Honor killings, female genital mutilation and horrific executions like Aisha’s are disturbingly common and domestic violence rampant.

While the problems faced by American women need our attention (violence against women in this country is unacceptably frequent), they do seem paltry compared to the struggles of women in other parts of the country.

This doesn’t mean we should forget our problems – but we also must not forget the women who have so many more.

Of course, the oppression of women is intertwined with numerous others: extreme poverty, corrupt or dysfunctional governments, wars and ethnic conflict. Solving them won’t be easy, and intervention from foreign countries is a delicate issue. But the cost if we do nothing is far too high.

We are already too late for Aisha.