[Day 6] Motherhood
Two years ago rageprufrock began the first 14 Valentines and she spoke of how women are praised in song, worshiped in poetry, and derided in culture. She spoke beautifully and elegantly of women, comparing our bodies to luminous flowers. She spoke of the state of women, and the need to remember what we go through, what women throughout the world suffer through.
We are daughters, sisters, mothers, and lovers. If we choose, we can bring life into world with our blood and nourish it with our bodies, but the world that we helped create, that women have bled for and fought for and cried for, doesn't recognize us. Our history is one of abuse. We are not safe.
Women suffer from domestic violence and rape. We are devalued. We are taught that we are lesser. There is still so much work to do, so much for us to accomplish.
It's 2008 and Hillary Rodham Clinton is, as I write this, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S. Yet, even as this is happening, women are being killed the world over, suffering from infanticide, dying from lack of medical care, killing themselves in the fight to be what society tells them they must. One in three women will still experience sexual assault in her lifetime. So much has changed and so much has stayed the same.
It's 2008 and we've come so far, but there is still more work to be done. We deserve better, and we can do more. We're strong. The next fourteen days is meant to remind us of that. It's our time to take back our bodies.
V can stand for vagina, like Eve Ensler's groundbreaking monologues. V can stand for violence, under whose auspices all women continue to make a home.
V can also stand for victory.
Motherhood
The US ranks 26th in a report on the State of the World's Mothers complied by the charity, Save the Children. Many women struggle with the harsh reality that if a woman chooses to have children, her career will suffer. Frequently by the time she has finished an advanced degree or has established herself at her job, the ideal years for conception have passed. Women are spending millions of dollars every year on fertility treatments, which can have significant and lasting effects on a woman's physical and emotional wellbeing. The shame of postpartum depression and the stigma of single parenting, or as some people would still call it, being an unwed mother, colors how we're accepted in society. In an extended survey of international countries, the only two countries with no paid maternity leave are Australia and the United States.
In many countries, complications from pregnancy and child birth are the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. In fact, nearly 600,000 women die every year from these causes, roughly one every minute. Less than one percent of these deaths take place in Western countries, proving that more readily available medical and educational resources could prevent the vast majority of these deaths. There are countries in which almost fifty percent of the births happen without a midwife or doctor present, and in countries like Niger, the rate can sink to sixteen percent. Even if a woman survives childbirth, there are serious risks; for every woman who dies giving birth, another 20 to 30 face suffer debilitating injuries or illnesses ranging from HIV to fistula to perinatal depression.
In the US, Mary's Center for Maternal & Child Care in Washington DC offers services ranging from prenatal health care and intensive home visits for pregnant and post-natal women, to programs that helps women become aware of and to claim the federal benefits they are entitled to. Their programs are multilingual, enabling minority women to care for themselves with a great deal more ease, and their tireless work makes a difference. On the international front, The Fistula Foundation is dedicated to treating and preventing this serious and life threatening condition arising from childbirth. In over thirty-three years, their hospitals in Ethiopia have aided more than thirty-two thousand women who otherwise would have died, and one of the founders, Catherine Hamlin, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Motherhood doesn't have to be as dangerous as it is. We and organizations like these ones can make a difference.