Hearing the voices of the next generation of women
When I started to brainstorm ideas for this blog as we entered Women’s History Month and marked International Women’s Day, I thought about all the women and girls in our history who changed so much for the women of today. There is much to celebrate and many achievements that must never be forgotten.
Yet as I flicked through our latest book and read the visions of the future from girls from around the world, I didn’t find evidence of the equality or visions of freedom that the women from the past dreamt of. Not enough has changed.
Eighteen-year-old Blessing from Nigeria wrote a poem for Visions of the Future that not only captures the brutal, violent reality for many girls in her country, but also the fear and the anger that this is wrong.
Eyes; red, scared.
Skin; blood, trembling.
Mouth; screams.
This is the name we call girls
in my country,
This is how they welcome them
to womanhood;
Naked, cold, bare, pleading
against the bruises of
fingernails scratching
against their skin
and sometimes they live, sometimes
they die
because life is fifty-fifty when your
body is battlefield
bleeding from these bullets.
Eyes; red, scared.
Skin; blood, trembling.
Mouth; screams, screams.
This is how girls in my country
pay condolences to their bodies
this is how they write tributes
to their voice,
begging for justice in a land they
were born culprits,
because when Jane walks in the night
after nine
She puts her life on the line. Why?
Eyes; red, scared.
Skin; blood, trembling.
Mouth; screams, screams.
This is how our sisters’ breathe.
They breathe all today, because tomorrow
they may have nothing to breathe.
In Nigeria one in four girls will experience some sort of violence in their childhood. And Nigeria has the largest number of child brides in Africa with more than 23 million girls and women married as children*. Sadly, these statistics are not just the case for girls in Nigeria. What Blessing is describing is a reality around the world for millions of girls.
Our next generation of women should not be witness or part of these problems. We should be beyond that.
In India, 12-year-old Niharika when submitting her Vision of the Future said:
Niharika should not need feel that women are not free to live their own lives. Girls like Niharika should be able to dream big; to hope for more.
Yet underneath my disappointment, there was something else too. A pride. A strength. A hope that despite everything, the next generation of women have a vision, they have a plan. They have their voices, and they will find ways to use them.
It’s humbling to ask young people to submit their visions of the future for a book and to receive glimpses of their lives that remind us all of the inequality and insecurity that many of our young people live with. It’s humbling to hear their call and passion for change.
As we close Women’s History Month I realise just why it is so important to celebrate our past – because remembering keeps hope and drive alive for the change that must still come. Celebrating all those who have won important battles for women is the oxygen for young women like Blessing and Niharika to stand up for the change that must come now.
*https://www.unicef.org/media/116321/file/Nigeria-2021-COAR.pdf