What came first — politics or society?

Jen Nadeau’s most recent blogpost on Change.org’s Women’s Rights page clued me into an op-ed and video by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.

Saving Lives with Family Planning

Please watch the video: It’s well done and shows a glimpse of life in places most of us can only see through others’ lenses; in this case, Haiti. But I have a problem with Kristof’s premise.

He constructs his argument around a sad-looking, pregnant young mother of nine. His point is that the UN’s efforts to fight global poverty will go nowhere if they can’t also control fertility in impoverished nations, like this one in the Carribean.

It’s a political argument, mostly. Kristof blames the fierce American abortion debate for drying up American dollars going to the United Nations Population Fund. This column is supposed to be optimistic: President Obama has lifted the ban on aid to this fund, Kristof points out in his last paragraph. Hurray! The problem is still going to be difficult to tackle, but the biggest obstacle is out of the way, right?

I don’t think so. I’m skeptical politics alone are the cause of uncontrollable populations in these countries, which can barely afford to feed their current population, let alone the continuing explosion of new births. As Kristof points out in the video, the problem in Haiti is not a lack of resources. There are family planning clinics all over the place that give out birth control pills, patches injections, condoms and other proven tools. But the birth rate is the same as it was 25 years ago. So why do we think more money to open more of the same clinics is going to help the problem?

I think the root of the problem lies in something the subject of the story, Nahomie Nercure, says in the middle of the video.

“I stopped doing the family planning because it gave me a lot of problems,” she said through a translator. “It made my head spin and I had trouble standing up. The doctor said the only planning I can do is a condom, and we split up because my husband didn’t want to use condoms.”

Later, Nercure said she confronted the father of the child currently growing in her belly and asked him why he left her. “He told me, ‘Why don’t you just die,’” she said.

That is a perfect example of  the real problem here: The machismo mentality of so many of these impoverished countries that forces otherwise intelligent women into making poor choices. I can see where Nercure is coming from when she talks about birth control giving her problems. I also struggle with birth control, going on and off it, trying to find a way to eliminate persistent migraines and outbreaks of mouth sores I’m convinced are related to the hormone-controlling pills. And if this is hard for me, a born and bred American, it’s even harder for women in places like the Latin America, where modern medicine is still generally mistrusted, especially in lower classes.

But take that away and Nercure still has a very viable option: condoms. The problem? This involves the man needing to make the choice to put on the condom and use it during sex. And men in this culture just do not do that. Why should they when their culture tells them their own personal pleasure is more important than responsibility to their families? Marriage is uncommon in lower classes in these countries. Men go from woman to woman, and then leave them behind to care for the children while they continue to engage in the pursuits of a single man. And this is just accepted. Men are in charge, women clean up the mess from the men’s dumb decisions. No one says a word to the men, and the cycle continues. This is life.

To me, the solution is not pouring more money into family planning clinics. The problem is much deeper than asking, “Do they have birth control, do they have condoms and do they know how to use them?”

This is not relevant, because the answers to all the above questions are already yes. The problem lies in the cultural norms of these societies, and changing those is going to be a lot more complicated than throwing money at it.

Today in Washington: A spotlight on women’s rights

President Obama told an audience of powerful women to hold him accountable for women’s rights. He signed an executive order creating a White House Council for Women and Girls today.

In stating what he wants this council to promote, the president focused on the basics: equal pay (women earn about 78 cents to every dollar men earn), eradicating domestic violence (1 in 4 American women experiences it — a staggeringly high number) and promoting more females in top positions (just 3 percent of Fortune 500 company leaders are women).

Later this afternoon, over at the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama honored five international women’s rights activists. In her speech, Clinton hit a little on something I covered in my last post: we may think things are unequal here, but it pales in comparison to what women are still fighting for in other countries.

As a side note, here’s a report by NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell comparing the two role-model material women (at least in my book) side-by-side:

I’m not really sure what point Andrea was trying to make. I mean, these are two entirely different women after all, so one would expect them to have different interests and goals. I admire Obama’s decision to take on nutrition just as much as I give props to Clinton to having taken on that tangled world of health care. Both are essential to Americans’ well-being, and often get overlooked in the regular political shuffle.

But I digress. What matters here is that two high-profile politicians (one being the PRESIDENT) gave major recognition to women and their right to equal treatment. However, this is Women’s History Month, and sooner rather than later (probably tomorrow) things will go back to the same old struggle for females. Let’s relish what we saw today.

International Women’s Day across the globe

Today is International Women’s Day, the unofficial kickoff of Women’s History Month here in the U.S. This year’s theme is about ending violence against women and girls. While this blog focuses on a very serious form of discrimination — wage and job inequalities — it’s important to remember that this problem may seem miniscule to women in other countries who face the very real threat of rape and even death on a daily basis. In fact, we shouldn’t forget that even here in the Western world physical violence is a reality for many women. According to the American Institute on Domestic Violence:

• 85-95% of all domestic violence victims are female
• 5.3 million women are abused each year
• 1,232 women are killed each year by an intimate partner
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women
• Women are more likely to be attacked by someone they know than by a stranger

Here’s a glimpse at how women around the world took advantage of today to build awareness:

Women in Nepal gathered to build interest in making the new national constitution more “women friendly.”

Photo credit: xinhuanet.com

In Lebanon, women erected wooden figures representing foreign domestic workers who died during work in the country.

Photo credit: suomenkuvalehti.fi

A woman activist holds a banner in Rome on March 7, 2009.

Photo credit: expatica.com

The coverage in U.S. news was disappointingly hard to find.

Last week, the New York Times, however, published an eye-opening graphic on wage disparities in different U.S. industries. Check it out:

It just proves even more how much farther this country has to go to start rewarding equal pay for equal work.