Blog posts by related to Gender equity

Youth, Empathy, and Sports for Social Change

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Posted Mar 31, 2011 10:00am
Anonymous

Dr. Auma Obama was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Auma Obama

A selection from Changemakers' interview with Dr. Auma Obama (left), CARE USA's Sports for Social Change Initiative Program Technical Advisor:

CM: The first step in “change-making” is becoming aware – becoming frustrated with the status quo and inspired to see that a different world is possible. How did you develop such awareness?
AO: When I asked why I was tasked with chores my older brother would never do, the response was always the same: “Because you’re a girl.” Because I was a girl? That answer was never good enough for me. I refused to be categorized, to be put into a box. So by the time I was eight-years-old, I began challenging the gender inequalities in my male-dominated household, and by extension the patriarchal Luo culture I was raised in.

How did you grow in confidence to give yourself permission to care and to act?
I developed very early a sense of fairness and what is right and wrong, regardless of gender. It was important to me to be able to defend my position and act on my sense of justice. This was not just in relation to me, but also towards other people as well. I guess that must have laid the foundation for the humanitarian work I am doing now. It was, however, difficult to be heard as a girl and it was only after I was enrolled in an all-girls high school when I was thirteen that I really started to find my voice.

[...]

Woman Runner = Social Transformation

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Posted Mar 30, 2011 7:00am
Anonymous

Kathrine Switzer was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Kathrine Switzer at the Boston Marathon / Photo Credit - AP Images

Pictured above: Kathrine Switzer is accosted by a judge who tried to eject her from the normally all-male Boston Marathon in 1967, when male teammates bounced the official out of the race instead and she went on to finish.  April 19, 1967 in Hopkinton, Mass. (AP PHOTO)

★★★

by Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon and to win the New York City Marathon. She led the drive to get the women’s marathon into the Olympics, and is a TV commentator and author of Marathon Woman. She will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame on Oct.1, 2011.

★★★

It is an interesting fact that you cannot pursue a physical activity for a long time and stay angry. When the adrenaline and aggression burn themselves off, the endorphins and reasonable-- even creative—thoughts take over.

So it was with me 44 years ago, this April 18, when I was attacked in the Boston Marathon by a race official who was so angry that I was a female in his male-only race that he tried physically to eject me. I was rescued by my male teammates who bounced the official out of the race instead, and I went on to finish.

I said that I would finish the race on my hands and knees if I had to, to prove to this official and the world that women were physically capable of running the marathon distance, and I deserved a place in this race. I was angry with the official for 20 miles of hard running, and then a light went on. [...]

Why I am Committed to Ending Child Marriage

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Posted Mar 28, 2011 11:00am
Anonymous

Sarah Degnan Kambou, PhD, was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.


by Sarah Degnan Kambou, PhD, president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)

Iredjourèma was born in 1935 to a traditional healer in Burkina Faso. She was the third of ten children, and lost her mother when she was 12.

As a young girl, Iredjourèma was regarded as a talented, graceful dancer. She was smart, too. But she never had the opportunity to attend school because she was needed to tend the family’s sheep. At 16, Iredjourèma’s family arranged for her to marry a man eight years her senior. She carried nine pregnancies to term, and nearly died giving birth to her youngest child.   

Today, there are more than 50 million child brides like Iredjourèma worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Child marriage — the practice of marrying girls younger than 18, often to much older men — is a violation of girls’ human rights. It also compromises their education, health, well-being, and productivity. [...]