A remarkable story, told by Ellen Barry in the New York Times. She should get a Pulitzer for this.
And the incomprehensibly brave, very poor and illiterate Indian women who were ostracized and beaten by their male-dominated village–a village whose entire work force had previously been male, and whose entire income derived from begging–simply for going out to work, to earn money…well, they should get whatever awards there are for fighting the global war against their gender. They should be awarded freedom from their appalling, primitive culture.
If you tend to doubt that there is a global war that men wage eternally against women because they are afraid of what women can accomplish if treated as equal human beings, please read this, from the end of Barry’s article, as she quotes the village shaman and boss, Roshan, after the “victory”:
Roshan could not help preening a little. “See, in our community, a woman is a woman and a man is a man,” he said. “This is what it is here. Women have lower status and men have higher status.” If any more women propose to challenge that principle, he said, “we will quietly, politely tell them this is not a good thing.”
And that night, as the sun slipped down over the sugar cane, Roshan and the others laughed and laughed.
Here’s the Times’ abstract and link to this stunning report:
The Indian Constitution guarantees equality under the law. But for women facing a patriarchal social order, strict caste rules and centuries of traditions, that guarantee means little.
Source: Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats – The New York Times
…
It seems that Times was declaring Sunday Global War Against Women Day: here is Nicholas Kristof’s column, Her Father Shot Her in the Head, as an ‘Honor Killing’ – The New York Times.
And each article, but especially the Barry story, is illustrated with sweeping, gorgeous full color photography of the village and the women she writes about.