Lucky to be European

As I cradle my baby daughter in my arms, I reflect daily on how lucky both she and I are to be born European. Not only for education and central heating and abundant food but for the mere fact that here we are women free to live free, productive, self-directed lives. This right has been hard-won and thanks go out to the pioneers like Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette.

This week, Robert Pickton was convicted in Canada of 2nd degree murder of six women. He is on trial for the murder of 20 other women. Most of his victims were drug addicts and prostitutes from Canada’s poorest postcode, Downtown Eastside Vancouver. What has angered people more than just the murders is the lack of priority given to the large number of missing person cases in the late 1990′s. Women, sex-workers, drug- addicts are second-class citizens and their lives are worth less than those of the wealthy.

I have just finished reading an article in the International Herald Tribune detailing the voyage of a team of soldiers and medics, hunting the Taliban, and finding sick children by the score in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In every village they visited, the humble, poor villagers trundled out their sick, ill-clothed children begging for medical attention. We all know the plight of women in Taliban-controlled areas – no rights, second-class status, chattel – but we sometimes forget that children are always the victims of might-and-muscle regimes. What a tragedy to be born a girl in Afghanistan.

I then moved onto equally inspiring and uplifting news from Africa. Scourge of child sexual abuse takes toll on girls in sub-Saharan Africa says the headline and it’s right. Reporting huge numbers of child sexual abuse accusations, incompetent prosecution, backhanders and a culture whose inherent relegation of girls and women to second place, they post heart-rending photos of tiny girls abused by neighbours, employers and relatives.

Increasingly, African nations are openly acknowledging the problem, partly because AIDS has made children more likely to fall ill or die from abuse. Campaigns against child sexual abuse are under way in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

If there is anything positive to have come from AIDS, this must be it. I cannot accept that we share a world where this continues to take place. I feel sick and sad just thinking about it. Of course, there must be many parts of Africa where this does not go on, where women and girls have status and rights and control of their bodies and lives. Mustn’t there?

Finally, good old India’s dowry system makes north India the worst place to born a girl. Every girl child is born with the burden of the cost of a huge wedding and dowry on her tiny head. Wives and children are abandoned by husbands unable to face the financial obligation and the social stigma associated with fathering females. The wealth generated by the economic boom of India’s IT sector does not reach these miserable people. Dowry is illegal in India, but deeply ingrained in the culture. Determining the sex of unborn children is also illegal but widely practiced. If you can afford to have a sex-determination examination, can you not afford to raise a little girl? Is a girl only worth the money, bedsheets and baubles that her parents offer in order to get rid of her?

Among my friends, most of us in our child-bearing and child-rearing years, there appear to be a large number of girls being born. I reckon it’s in order to redress the imbalance caused by so many murdered baby girls in countries like India and China, and to fill our little world with the female energy which is, ultimately, going to be what get us out of this state of permanent war, waste and want.

So I kiss my lovely daughter goodnight and thank Goddess we are Europeans.