CAMP GLOW AND GENDER EQUALITY

I am here at CAMP GLOW this week. The camp is a week-long leadership camp for Namibian youth. (I will post photos as soon as I can.)

One interesting discussion we had was about gender equality. Women in Namibia, especially in the village, sometimes have limited control over their sexual relationships. For example, if a woman asks her husband to use a condom and he says no, she often has little control over this. Thus, the HIV/AIDs pandemic is strongly related to gender equality and poverty. Not only are women constrained by gender inequalities and society and media-dictated power imbalances, they are sometimes economically reliant on their partners and thus unable or unwilling to walk away from a relationship. This is the reality in some parts of Namibia, and many other places in the world.

Men and women should work together as brothers and sisters working together towards this goal. This is ALLYSHIP – it is the CORAGEM (courage) that Nancy Bacon wrote about recently on her “Social Change Collaboratorium” blog. We must seek to build bridges and cross them together, to seek compassion and love. Again, as Alice Walker says, “Anything that we love can be saved.” The issues of gender equality are simply too important to be ignored. The very future of our world and harmonious and productive societies depends on it.

In terms of gender equality, our society is on a journey to heal. We must work to move forward in an empowered, progressive, manner. We must face the difficult discussions and welcome the much-needed societal transformations. There is no safety in silence.

Perhaps indicating the best aspects of camp, when I asked one of the girls what was the most important thing she learned that day, she responded that it was “how to speak out for myself.” YES YOU CAN!!