Zuber1 XoeAnne Zuber Elder Honors ELA 1, H1 13 March 2015 She I am here to talk to the young men and women in the room about something that grips my heart. What I am here to talk about is women’s rights around the world. If you don’t like it then get up, grab your things and leave the room. I am a girl, a woman, a female and I am strong. Now that we have established who I am, do we all share a common goal to make everyone see that we stand on equal footing with each other? Good, now let’s get started. First let’s address the issue; girls around the world today are looked at as property. They are just another thing that a man can own, like cattle or land. Since they are his property he can do whatever he likes with her. Girls as young as ten are taken from their households and turned into a quote on quote “proper wife”. If you bleed, you are ready to get a husband and eventually become pregnant. It’s crude and controversial but it needs to be said out loud for a change. Girls are more of a resource than wheat or water. Or are they? Girls are the future and by taking away their basic rights to live they are being taught that they are a lost cause. Let’s not focus on North America at the moment and let’s look at India. A dowry is the fortune that comes with having a daughter. It determines social class, availability, and wealth. To have a daughter in India is to create a debt for yourself and your daughter. A daughter is a burden and a cloud overcasting an otherwise sunny day. So to prevent any further debt in the family daughters are brought into life and taken out of it immediately. Directly after birth Indian baby girl’s faces are covered by a wet cloth and smothered until they
2 can cause any financial damage to the family. Feticide is what they call it around the world. Take a step back and read those sentences again and again and again. Read them until you can’t forget them. Throwing away a daughter simply because she is a girl. Today dowries are illegal in India and it is illegal to get ultrasounds determining the sex of the baby. That doesn’t stop it from happening though. Why is that the man gives the woman his last name. Shouldn’t be in the power of both of them to decide who takes whose name. Marriage is a partnership between two people not between a person and half a person. Am I less of a person because I don’t want to be discriminated against because of my sex? What if it was the other way around and women reined over men? If you don’t produce a daughter at least once then you are a useless husband and I don’t need you. Unbeknownst to many men it is the man who determines the sex of the baby not the woman. Birthright is the same for someone of any skin color or nationality so why not for the gender. Why does a man get paid higher wages than the best female worker in the work force? Why does my gender determine whether I’m weaker or less intelligent? If he can have it why can’t I have it? Today sex trafficking, prostitution and rape are more prominent then ever. When the amount of women per man goes down these rates shoot up as men who are unmarried or younger look for partners of a different kind to satisfy. Why marry when you can simply pay for a high school girl. Children are snatched out of their beds for child sex trafficking. Girls are abducted and sold to pimps for a fraction of what it costs to get married in a cathedral. Women are held in illegal brothels and shipping containers. Girls and women are taken in the dead of night and are raped or murdered. It’s a cause and effect sort of thing. Less women makes the world a horrible place.
Zuber3 So I was listening to ‘ I Was Here ‘ by Beyoncé and I started wondering why women are less prominent throughout history than men are. So many times I’ve looked through my history book and I hardly come across a female that served as an influential figure. There are so many women who go unrecognized everyday. As girls and ladies we should look for these women and look up to them. Women like Madam C.J. Walker, Oprah, JK Rowling, and Beyoncé. Madam C.J. Walker was the first self-made female millionaire philanthropist. Oprah is a self-made woman of influence around the world. JK Rowling will go down in history for her brilliant work on Harry Potter that can be described in equal measure to Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Beyoncé is a brilliant singer/songwriter who doubles as a mother. So many more women like every girl in this room are undiscovered diamonds. There was a young girl a few years back who fought for her right to go to school. Her name is Malala Yousafazai. She was shot at point blank range in the head because she wanted to go to school. If a girl my age can do something as strong as stand up to the Taliban, what does that say about me? Shouldn’t I be doing something like she is doing? Malala made it so that there was enough of a rise to make others think about speaking up. She dropped a pebble in the ocean and the waves have carried across and around the world. I want to do something like that. I want everyone to do something like that. Imagine if every LGBTQ person in the world stood up one day and spoke out. Imagine if every black person stood up and demanded rights. Now imagine if every woman in the world took off their masks and joined hands. Pretty amazing, huh? Anything you do today will create waves tomorrow. So I dare you to stand up today or tomorrow or whenever you get around to it and become a feminist. Even if you’re a guy, respect women because they deserve it. Today is the day we try to throw a pebble into the ocean and
4 create those ripples those other women and girls had once created. Change is priority and that includes as a whole society. For you to be better everyone around you must be better. It’s not all that bad, today girls are playing their own sports, which are becoming increasingly popular around the world. Prejudice is just a practiced tradition. At the time I could understand it but in today’s society women are moving forward by leaps and bounds. Who run the world…GIRLS!!!!!! Our sex doesn’t matter after all…a rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet.