Citizenship in the United States is accompanied by a plethora of rights and freedoms: the ability to practice wide ranges of religion freely, despite race or gender and guaranteed public education for children. These privileges are so deeply engrained into the American heritage that many of our country’s citizens are able to neglect the fact that outside of our cushy democratic republic, these opportunities remain unavailable to a large portion of the world’s population. However, with conflict in the Middle East so prominent in today’s headlines, it has become increasingly difficult to shirk this unsavory truth. Middle Eastern governments and cultural practices have been violently thrust into the public eye of the U.S. media, causing observers to question the ethics of these geographical areas.
Through my own observation of the media, I have been specifically drawn to question the discrimination toward the female gender. Upon further research, my uneasiness concerning the living conditions of Middle Eastern and Indian women continued to grow.
Huffington Post recently posted a chilling article about a child in Yemen entitled, “Bride aged 8 dies after suffering internal sexual injuries during wedding night with man, 40.”
After these words sank into my conscious and the shock subsided, pure fear ensued.
I look back to when I was 8 years old. It was 1999, and my most treacherous obstacle was how to defeat Pokémon on my Gameboy Color.
I attempt to conjure a logical reason for this tragedy, but the only response my mind can produce is a resounding, “Why?”
Why would a child so young be expected to relinquish the joys of adolescent innocence? Why would a family allow for this burden to be placed upon their offspring? Why would the government refrain from intervention?
The answers to these questions revolve primarily around financial despair.
Over 25 percent of girls in Yemen are married before the age of 15 (Al Bawaba); 44.5 percent of women in India are married before they reach 18 years of age (Thomson Reuters Foundation Services).
These staggering statistics can be credited in part to the fact that women are not able to properly support themselves monetarily. In the same sense, if a family struggles financially, they may be forced to marry off their children at a young age in an attempt to secure economic stability, both for themselves and their daughters. This vicious cycle is perpetuated by the fact that in some areas of the Middle East, women earn nearly 82 percent less than their male counterparts in annual wages (Thomson Reuters Foundation Services).
The underlying question to this series of bleak predicaments is this: How can this inequality be rectified? The most relevant solution seems to be education.
Only 13 percent of Afghani women are literate, and this trend spans across the borders of many other Middle Eastern and Indian territories. With this large number of uneducated female inhabitants, it is no wonder that women are unlikely to acquire financially rewarding careers. In addition, it is also no surprise that the Middle Eastern economy lacks middle class stimulation when all fiscal responsibility rests on the shoulders of male citizens.
If these affected countries were able to implement proper and equal education across the board, the positive results would be virtually immeasurable. Economic stimulation, gender-unbiased legislation and improved foreign policy relations merely scratch the surface of the benefits to be reaped. It is with the hope that these benefits can be achieved that I urge those of us fortunate enough to receive uninhibited education to take full advantage of this blessing and fight for change on behalf of those less fortunate.
Through my own observation of the media, I have been specifically drawn to question the discrimination toward the female gender. Upon further research, my uneasiness concerning the living conditions of Middle Eastern and Indian women continued to grow.