The Great Debate UK
Women: the “Secret Weapon” against Hunger and Poverty
- Jennifer Parmalee is senior public affairs officer and spokesperson on global issues with the United Nations World Food Programme. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters is hosting a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.–-
A few years ago, I traveled to northern Bangladesh – a hardscrabble region forever whipsawed between drought and flood – to interview teenage girls and mothers at a maternal and child health center supported with nutritional food by the UN World Food Programme.
But 13-year-old Nazma, standing tall like a proud butterfly in her colorful salwar kameez, had a question for me first: “Please sing a song from your country.”
I hesitated, then reached for the song I had sung to my daughters as a lullaby: “Amazing Grace.” Nazma listened quietly and then, with ethereal poise and clarity of voice, surprised me by responding with the anthem of the U.S. civil rights movement: “… Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome, some day!”
It turns out Nazma, on the cusp of womanhood, had more to overcome than “just” impoverished circumstances. She was the only female in the room to have stayed in school as long as sixth grade and facilitators expected that soon, she too, would be called off for early marriage.
It is International Women’s Day and Nazma’s lovely, determined face is still vivid in my mind. I wonder if her evident strength and intelligence will enable her to break free of the terrible bonds of poverty.
Worldwide, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty, hunger and discrimination, comprising more than 60 percent of the world’s chronically hungry – now charted at a record one billion people. Inherited hunger – when malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished children – is a huge obstacle to development, from Afghanistan to Haiti.
I will be proud to be a woman, even proud to be a Human when we get a grip on our breeding.
We are breeding ourselves to extinction along with every other species and we seem to be proud of it.
I am starting to climb the walls here.
Even though I’d have liked to have children, I am going to take the hit for the kids I would have loved to have and not have any because I would be too ashamed to tell my kids that when I was young, we had roaming tigers, lions, there were plenty of fish in the seas, and there was still a rainforest to speak of. In the 70s we knew what was coming and did nothing to stop it – partly because of our ridiculous religious beliefs. I am afraid it is no longer a case of “the more the merrier”. In 30 years time we’ll all be dreadfully sorry…