It is always so easy to accuse others when often the fault lies much closer to home. When I first went to the House of Lords in 1990 I found it to be quite reserved, and it took me some months to start making friends. Then I realised that the people who appeared reserved were just shy and it was a question of first breaking down that barrier of shyness.
As I learned more about the so-called boys in the House of Lords, I began to notice how much they looked after each other. I found that if there was somebody in trouble, with either health or money problems, they would rally round and find some way of helping that person; they would try to organise a solution to their money worries, or if someone was in hospital they would arrange visits. I was very impressed by their solidarity. This was at the time of hereditary peers, to whom I am referring. What intrigued me was that they weren’t competitive with each other. They were supportive, especially in times of trouble. I eventually asked a fellow peer how it was that they were so good at looking after each other while women seemed less inclined to back one another up. He said they had been doing it for 2,000 years while we women had just started; we had got to give ourselves some time. A 2,000 year old boys’ club – I was very struck by that.
In my experience women don’t have such a strong fellow feeling towards one another. I find that if you are on a committee, for example, then the women compete with each other. They want to show up the other women. I am sorry to say women are not sisters as they like to believe – there is no question about it. For example, if a man is disabled women will rush up to him and ask how he is, but if a woman is disabled women will still go up to the husband and ask how he is managing; I should know, since my husband has been disabled for over 20 years. I pointed this curious phenomenon out when I spoke at the Albert Hall to a gathering of the Townswomen’s Guild and asked the audience who they thought women went to when a woman was in a wheelchair, and they all shouted from the floor: ‘The man!’
This, of course, is all so far removed from the poverty of Africa and the Indian sub-continent we are addressing, but if instinctively, even in the so-called developed world, women are not treating each other as sisters and people to be supported, then what hope is there for the rest of the world who have so much less?
Who is it who dishes the dirt and maltreats the daughters-in-law in the Indian households? The mothers-in-law, of course. The son can do no wrong, and in return the son still idolises his mother. Who carries out the female genital mutilation (FGM) on young girls in Africa? It is all practised by the women. FGM – the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons – is so destructive to a woman; she cannot enjoy any sexual pleasure in life and the result is that she cannot have any normal sex life because she is in pain all the time. The basic facts from the World Health Organization make appalling reading but need to be understood. It is most common in Africa, where it is estimated that 92 million girls aged ten and over have undergone FGM, but also in Asia and the Middle East. It continues among immigrants to North America and Europe. Even when you try to stop it happening and laws are passed, it is difficult to take action.
WHO key facts:
• Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
• An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
• In Africa, about three million girls are at risk of FGM annually.
• The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
• Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later, potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths.
• It is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15 years.
• FGM is internationally recognised as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.35
There is envy and a great deal of rivalry among women. The older women resent the younger women working, and this is true in the West as well. It is as if they are saying: ‘I didn’t get the opportunity to work so why should you?’ They see each other as opponents in life’s battles rather than as fellow sufferers who should be supported. Of course, this is a generalisation, and obviously all women are not like that, but in the regions we are focusing on it is commonplace. In the West women use their beauty, their guile and wit to stand out from the female competition; in the underdeveloped parts of the world they practise a different cruelty on each other, a physical cruelty. Often that cruelty can be hidden cruelty, mental as well as physical, behind closed doors. If women supported each other that would make a huge difference. It is all about retaining power. Mothers-in-law have the power to mistreat their daughters-in-law, although the power of the mother in the home depends very much on the individual. Some are very strong, some are very clever, and their cleverness is appreciated by the family so they do become the rock around which the family revolves.
The challenge and hope is that when women achieve positions of authority beyond the family, perhaps in local or even national politics where they can do something to espouse women’s causes, they will take up that challenge. Unfortunately all too often, if they do speak up they are written off by the mainstream as just being interested in women’s rights. I am not naive; it would have been a long hard struggle to reach such status. It is not an easy life for women politicians who have achieved high positions, and they are reluctant to do anything that might threaten their progress.
While we may read of the horrors of honour killings and dowry deaths which are actually carried out by the men, make no mistake that women have been known to trick their daughters-in-law into revealing where they are hiding, pretending to be sympathetic to the cruelty the girl has suffered at the hands of their son. They are even prepared to ‘expose’ their own daughters, and apparently to stand back when they too are dragged away. So be in no doubt that women can make the lives of other women totally miserable. Yes, there are wonderful grandmothers who care for their grandchildren – in Africa, there may be no one else if both parents have died from Aids – and quite obviously there are caring mothers-in-law, but the petty cruelties of the boardroom are just as unforgivable as the more physical and mental suffering in a hut in Africa. The onus is on all women to start supporting and stop harming one another. A mother-in-law should not worry about losing control of the household, the rising female politicians should not forget the battles they fought to achieve stardom: only then will we see real change begin to happen.
It is impossible to empower women without a discussion of the sex lives of men and women in Africa and the Indian sub-continent. The United Nations Population Fund said: ‘The ability of women to control their own fertility is absolutely fundamental to women’s empowerment and equality.’ Women are not in control of their fertility, their bodies or their health. We just have to think of all the monogamous women who have HIV in India and are not allowed to go to the clinics because then everyone will know they have been infected by their husbands.
Women often do not get medical help, and one can see the stages of different kinds of illness which would never be seen in the West because it would never be allowed to get to that point. Medicine costs money, and women are not the bread winners, so it is always the man who needs to be looked after, not the woman.
I would like to quote at length from the story of a girl called Narita, who lives in Nepal but could easily have been living in Africa or India. It is a story reported by the White Ribbon Alliance, which promotes safe motherhood.36 She says:
Three days after the delivery of my first child, my mother-in-law made me pound the Dhiki [a traditional rice-pounding device made from a block of wood]. While I was working, I felt a severe pain in my lower abdomen and started to bleed heavily.
I went to my mother-in-law and told her about it. She told me that there was no need to worry. But my bleeding did not stop. She continued to force me to collect fodder for the cattle every day.
While lifting the bundle of fodder, I experienced an excruciating pain in my lower abdomen, followed by heavy bleeding. I felt as if I had fallen from a tree. I managed to get home carrying the fodder on my back. On my way home, I told my husband about this problem but he showed no concern. My in-laws also turned a deaf ear while I was writhing in pain. My husband would yell at me and order me to shut up, and so did my in-laws.
Due to the pain, I refused to have intercourse with my husband but he forced me into it because he wanted a child. I would feel extreme pain during intercourse and bleed profusely. I noticed part of my abdomen had slipped out of place, but did not know how. When my husband came to know about it, he was not moved by my plight. Instead he threatened to re-marry. My father-inlaw even refused to eat the food I cooked.
My in-laws supported my husband and together, they forced me out of the house one day. With great difficulty, I have managed to survive till now. Even the villagers hated me and used abusive language when I passed by.
Cast out by my husband and in-laws, I suffered alone. Often, I felt like committing suicide. In the meantime, as if to rub salt on my wound, I had a second child. After that the pain and bleeding worsened.
A kind lady in the village seeing my condition took me to a woman who handled such cases. Then I came to know that I was suffering from a uterine prolapse. This had happened as a result of heavy work I was made to do right after the child deliveries. She advised me to go to Kohalpur, a town which was a twelve-hour walk away.
In December 2007, I went to Kohalpur all alone and without help from my husband’s family. A local NGO helped me, and I was lucky that I survived after an operation. My condition has since improved.
I am telling my story because it can generate awareness among the countless poor women who undergo the same tribulations and ordeals as I did. In the eight wards of the Jajarkot District alone, there could be more than 12,000 women suffering from this problem and yet still deprived of any treatment.’
If you cannot expect support from your own family, what hope is there for so many of these young women? The fact of life in Africa and India is that a woman is replaceable. Every day there are stories such as Narita’s or the one I read about a girl of 12 who was sold for two goats. Inevitably, having given birth at such a young age she develops fistula and she will be thrown out by her husband who no longer wants her because she is incontinent. He certainly doesn’t mind if she dies – he can always buy another one for a couple more goats. If a woman is so utterly replaceable, like a worn-out shoe, she can be treated just the same.
I cannot understand why fertility and childbirth is only now an issue for the UN. It is such an obvious problem, and one that has been a cause for concern for decades – centuries. If you cannot control your own fertility or you cannot stop having more children because you are under the complete control of the man in your life, who is going to impregnate you whether you are willing or not, then what kind of future can you have? If you do not have any option in the number of children you bear then you cannot even start to have a life of your own.
Maybe now, finally, the world is recognising that women make up half the population, and that perhaps they have something to contribute. I am utterly convinced that if women start earning money it will give them a sense of their own self-worth, which in time will lead to them being interested in controlling their own fertility. Most of these women don’t even know that they can, that there are ways of not having so many children. And in my experience, when they know they can stop having more children most women stop in order to give a better life to their existing family. The link between the ability to earn as a result of very basic literacy and fertility is undeniable and is interestingly confirmed in Uganda. The total fertility rate is 7.8 among women with no education and 7.3 among women with some primary education. And when women have more than primary education, the rate dropped to 3.9 in 2000.37
There is still some idea that if you have a large family the children will look after you, but if you are in good health, working and have three healthy children instead of six unhealthy children, surely you are going to be better off. You yourself are going to be in a much better state of health; so are your husband and your children. All that comes from having some money. How can you lose? Having fewer children doesn’t spoil your future: it improves your future and that of your children. You educate them, you feed them, and it gives you the freedom to do the things you could not do if you had too many. All this seems so obvious that it scarcely needs to be said; and yet, if that were the case, why is there no concerted effort by governments and businesses to bring it about? If those in the affluent West do not have more than one or two children, who then get sent to private schools, surely it is right to help all women to have smaller families, to help them understand the significance of having children and the impact that would have on their lives.
In some rural communities it can be as basic as explaining those elementary details. The impact for the entire world is so clear. We are not talking about billions of dollars of investment and in return world population numbers will slow and eventually may even fall. I don’t believe we have a choice in the matter. Our grandchildren may soon be living in a world where even water, if available, is restricted. If the population of Africa alone is going to increase by 1.3 billion, how are they going to be fed and watered?
I asked a doctor why fertility was so high among undernourished women and was told the woman’s body puts everything into fertility. When there is nothing else, the survival of the species instinct kicks in. If a western woman ate so little, she probably would not have periods. But it is because the poor women of Africa and India are now into that survival mode that they have a high fertility rate in spite of being so malnourished.
If something has changed, if women’s fertility is an issue, then what is the UN doing about it? Just to put out a statement saying women have the right to control their own fertility will not be enough. It needs to be backed up by funding and, of course, family planning education. And yet in 2008 President Bush blocked funding to NGOs that promoted family planning, somehow suggesting that they worked with the Chinese government, whom the US government accused of ‘coercive abortion and involuntary sterilisations’. Marie Stopes International (MSI) put out a blistering statement rejecting the accusation and warning that the decision to discontinue the provision of US-funded contraceptive commodities to MSI would ‘seriously disrupt’ their family planning programmes in at least seven countries including Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. MSI’s chief executive, Dana Hovig, said women in these countries would be left with few options other than abortion, the majority of which would be unsafe and would be likely to result in their death or disability. He added: ‘At a time when world governments have pledged to increase their commitment of improving the health of women, only the Bush Administration could find logic in the idea that they can somehow reduce abortion and promote choice for women in China by causing more abortion and cutting choice for women in Africa.’
Between 2002 and 2008, the Bush Administration withheld a total of US$235 million authorised by Congress to the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), which supports family planning and reproductive health care programmes in 154 countries.38 That funding would have prevented 244,000 maternal deaths, helped 68 million women delay pregnancy and prevented 2.4 million women suffering from adverse health effects during pregnancy and childbirth, according to Anika Rahman, president of a New York-based group set up in 1998 to supplement funding lost to the UNFPA as a result of the Bush decision.
Happily, in his first days in office President Barack Obama rescinded the Bush rulings saying: ‘they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.’
A good first step, but Obama and all world leaders face vast financial problems, and the genuine concern is that the priority will become inward-looking as banks, corporations and countries retreat to their borders to try to salvage something from the wreckage. As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in October 2008: ‘while the financial crisis affects all countries, the poor in developing countries will be the worst hit.’
On the positive side, perhaps the truth is finally out: if you cannot control your own fertility, you cannot control you own life. Now the important factor is how do women get to control their own fertility? You can’t say to a woman that she must have control of her own fertility and just expect it to happen. How do they get to the point where women can understand about their own bodies? They need to know what they should do and why it is critical they take certain steps. It is a journey of understanding, but it requires that initial financial impetus.
How is it that we can be living in the 21st century and still be tolerating violence against half the population on a scale which even in the darkest days of past history has never been seen: forced marriage, dowry deaths, female infanticide, the abortion of female foetuses, marital rape, forced pregnancy, sterilisation, trafficking, honour killings and prostitution? It is getting worse, not better. Globalisation may have opened the world up but it has also given a boost to some of these horrors, particularly trafficking and prostitution. Poverty is often at the root of much misery when parents are so poor that they sell their daughter for something to eat and in the hope that she will enjoy a better life – she seldom does.
There are glimmers of hope, and we have to seize on those when they appear. In October 2008, a West African court found Niger’s government guilty of failing to protect a woman from slavery. Hadijatou Mani was sold when she was 12, raped aged 13 and forced to bear her ‘master’s’ children, and made to work for ten years. Whenever she ran back home, she was always returned to her slave master. The government of Niger was ordered to pay her the equivalent of £12,430. What was striking for me was what she intended to do with the money. She said: ‘I will be able to build a house, raise animals and farm land to support my family. I will also be able to send my children to school.’
But such moments are rare and only serve to highlight the extent of the problem. I would like to distinguish between a parent selling a child for what amounts to food and a consensual arranged marriage – what some in the West may regard, incorrectly as forced marriage. If a girl in Pakistan were to be married to her cousin, for example, she might not have any say in the matter. In that sense many marriages are forced. In a village, if the parents said to their daughter that she was going to marry a certain man, she would not be able to say no. She has not been brought up to do that and, what is more, it would probably not enter her head to refuse. She may not like it, but she would accept it because no one has told her she has a right to refuse. Such marriages are not right in rural communities even where there is ignorance, and certainly not right when families settle in the West. In the UK, the Home Office has received hundreds of calls on its hotline from girls frightened because they are being forced into marriage, and they have followed up some 500 cases.
We have come to accept that African conflicts will result in terrible violence. As I write this chapter, the Democratic Republic of Congo is once again experiencing war, and one commentator has said that we have become so used to Africa fighting that it rarely makes the headlines or even captures the full attention of the international community currently preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan or the economy. But while these events go on, children are being kidnapped and turned into little soldiers, women are being raped and killed, and men too are being hacked to pieces.
Don’t think violence is confined to the battlefield. Domestic violence and sexual violence in homes – so-called intimate partner violence – is endemic in every country throughout the world. According to an international survey by UNICEF, between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of women in every country suffer from some form of domestic violence.39 Every country passes laws supposedly to protect women, but if a woman has no value in a particular country, why should those laws be enforced? Such laws can also be something of a catch-all encompassing everything from pushing and shouting to breaking bones and rape – even within marriage. It is a scandalous statistic that domestic violence causes more death and disability among women aged 15 to 45 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war, according to the Human Rights Watch Report 2000. Another grim statistic reveals that between 40 per cent and 70 per cent of murders of women are committed by their husband or boyfriend.40
I recall listening to a panel of western speakers addressing women’s issues in Kenya, and one was saying how they had been trying to get women’s health further up the agenda but couldn’t persuade the health ministry to treat it as a priority. I said to them: ‘How can you expect that to happen when women have no value?’ They started writing this down as though they had discovered something for the first time. Perhaps they had, but I am shocked at the lack of awareness or understanding by these high-powered representatives who attend such meetings. They know all the statistics about how much money is being spent by the health ministry or how much aid is getting through, but they don’t know why women’s health is not on the agenda. Women don’t matter to the men in power. That is why it is not yet on the agenda. But it is not just violence against women, it is also ignorance. The almost casual disregard for women has become a way of life. One survey conducted by DFID in Malawi found that 25 per cent of women thought the violence they endured from their husbands was legal.
In 2007 the World Health Organization reported that somewhere in the world one woman dies every minute of the day from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and this despite the fact that modern medicine can and should eradicate maternal mortality. In sub-Saharan Africa risks are even higher, and the maternal death rate is 1 in 16 compared with 1 in 2,800 in developed countries. Nigeria, with 1,100 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, is the worst example in Africa, and only exceeded by India. Nigeria is home to 2 per cent of the global population, but 10 per cent of all maternal deaths occur there. WHO also report that even if women survive the births, there are still 300 million living with pregnancy-related illnesses. And what does the future hold for the children? The reality for nine million every year is a life of hunger and misery until they die of malnutrition before their fifth birthday. Such a life is its own form of violence against defenceless people, and it stems directly from violence against women.
Let me return to my central theme – giving women the ability to earn just a few pennies to transform their lives and the lives of everyone around them. When Hadijatou Mani was released from a life in slavery and was paid the princely sum of a few thousand pounds for her torment, her first thought was to build a home and educate her children. Multiply that by a few million, and it immediately becomes apparent what could be achieved if women were told they had the right to take care of their own health and, as the UN has demanded, were given control of their own fertility. With some small financial independence and some dignity restored, the position of that woman does not become equal to a man’s but she gains a value in her own eyes and in the eyes of her family and the village. When others see what she has achieved, soon the whole village is transformed. They start to take an interest in building up a future because they gain influence through the fact that they are not just downtrodden and valueless. I myself have witnessed many times the transformation that can be achieved and the wide-ranging consequences.
35 World Health Organization.
36 The White Ribbon Alliance is an international coalition of organisations and individuals in nearly 100 countries which works to save the lives of pregnant women and newborn children around the world.
37 Ellis et al. Gender Equality and Growth Evidence and Action, DFID, 2006.
38 UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Population Development and Reproductive Health.
39 UNICEF, Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls.
40 World Health Organization.