Opinions
Obama foremost and includes several Indian CEO’s (India and USA) and two Muslims, a Jordanian and Kuwaiti, both royals, underlining the fact that privilege can place one above the rest. The question of women's equality remains a hot topic, even in our so-called civilized Western world, especially on the issue of equal pay for equal work.
Women had argued for equal rights well before this and in fact had possessed them in Vedic India as several Western authors have noted including Will Durant, HH Wilson and Louis Jacolliot. In 1776, as Americans drafted a Constitution, Abigail Adams whose husband would become the second President of the United States, implored him not to forget or ignore women. She wrote him a letter which suggests that she wanted posterity to take note:
“I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity.”
A century later as English plebs agitated for reform Queen Victoria proclaimed, “The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write or join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights’ with all its attendant horrors on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”
Men received the right to vote but women had to wait until 1918.
I thought of these on hearing two Muslim academics in the USA yearning for justice and “democracy” for the Middle East. Democracy and Islam are probably incompatible; Islam is a way of life and a theocracy governed by Sharia law. This issue is active in several US states, UK, France, Germany and Canada. Sharia law entrenches male dominance and typically counts a woman as half a man, with no autonomy, totally dependent on husbands (or male relatives if unmarried); she cannot travel alone, can be forced into marriage, can be manhandled by spouses and face tougher punishment than males for similar misdeeds. Adultery is punishable by death. Some societies allow honour-killings by family for female transgression. Women who live in Islamic countries undoubtedly adjust to these realities. But for those who live in Western societies and enjoy the freedoms of their fellow citizens to make choices, the rigidities of Islam can become unbearable. But democracy is far more complex than simple freedom. Muslim women cannot have democracy unless they live in a secular state with gender equality and representative government, which runs counter the Islamic ideal. Sharia law is based on religion and on the exact teachings of the Prophet supplemented by interpretations from high-ranking scholars and compilations such as the Hadith. The Koran and these others are replete with statements on the subjugated or secondary status of women.
By contrast Will Durant noted, "Women enjoyed far greater freedom in the Vedic period than in later India… in the choice of her mate...She appeared freely at feasts and dances, and joined with men in religious sacrifice. She could study, and engage in philosophical disputation. If she was left a widow there were no restrictions upon her remarriage…"
Meanwhile the UN Commission on the Status of Women is stridently advocating the teaching of explicit sex in all its forms to school children! Is the pendulum perhaps swinging too far in the wrong direction?
School days were happy, chilly days
We have visited for many years. Our families have dinner together. I did not know that she had grown up in this neighbourhood. We get along well, sharing memories of journeys, family and settlement. Since we have so much in common I thought she too had arrived here from another faraway place.
"Fifty years ago the entire area was swamp; there were reeds everywhere," she said. I shook my head in agreement.
There are still patches of reeds in a few low-lying, swampy spots. "We visited neighbouring farms in a canoe. The land has been reclaimed over the years. That house next to the greenhouse was built by my dad. Across the street, where the cemetery is now, was all swamp." I understood then the still-standing, rusted signs that ask for clean landfill.
We were looking into a backyard filled with snow. The drifts were slowly, inexorably climbing over the neighbour's fence. I thought of a tide of white water frozen into a tsunami of snow as it had surged. In the winter months the backyard is an uninviting, alien place.
Moments before we had been chilled by a prevailing Arctic cold. It had gained an unyielding clutch for over two weeks and was refusing to let go. Walking into the bitter cold wind meant insulating the head with a toque and wrapping the neck in a scarf’s lengthy swirls. Moving forward into the wind and a temperature as low as -40 degrees Celsius meant using the protected head and a reinforced neck like a slow, patient battering ram. The cold was predatory. It wrapped the body entirely with a skein of malevolence. And then, like a spider with a victim in its web, it began drawing the warmth out.
"I walked to school and back home each day in such weather," my friend said. "It was a long walk. There were no paved roads. Nothing but a gravel track with two ruts where the wagon wheels ran. When we could, we crossed carefully on the frozen ice of the swamp. The snow drifts were always taller than me."
We were chatting about the children we see who walk to school nowadays. The cold does not seem to bother some. Unschooled in how mortal our bodies become as we grow older, I see them in a shirt, an unzipped winter coat, no hat, gloves or a scarf.
We talked about my son dealing with frost-bitten ears. The purple bruising, the peeling skin horrified him. Yet he did not want to spoil a spiked hair-do by wearing a toque. In frustration I told him it mattered not whether his ears fell off.
"You hardly use them anyway," I muttered discreetly, out of his hearing to not bruise his ego.
I had walked to school growing up back home. In a warmer place the temperature was climbing so quickly at 7:00 a.m. that one was sweating moments after leaving the house. Right away, just outside ‘the gap’ one stood aside to let the neighbour herd his goats past, the kids bleating, the nannies irritably pushing them along with soft, maternal head butts. Other neighbours kept cows in backyard pens. The walk to school meant sharing the roadway with these inattentive, perpetually chewing ruminants as they were led to pastures on the outskirts of the village.
There were a couple stops to be made before taking the gravel road that led to the wooden school house. First, there were wasp nests to be inspected. These had been built under the spreading branches of the tall palm trees that lined the entrance to the government building that housed the post office. A few of the stronger boys would be pelting rocks upwards in ongoing harassment. A lucky hit on a nest would bring a dive-bombing squadron out. We would scatter like cockroaches.
The next few stops were made by fruit trees. These ranged from the sour cherry to the noble Julie mango and a scattering of guava trees. The latter was the bane of our existence as school boys, for it was from these trees where the teachers cut their rods of correction. A guava whip was lithe and sturdy, its flexibility improving with age. However, its fruit was a delicious snack right after breakfast – unripe and green, its acids were countered by dipping, seeds and all, into an infusion of hot pepper and salt. So too the sour cherry – small as a marble, it was a translucent green hit of the sharpest citric sting a fruit could deliver. These we also devoured with a payload of salt.
We lined up by the public standpipe after this to drink its cold water with our cupped hands.
Today, there is a coffee shop on the way to school. For some kids, walking to class in sub-zero temperatures means posing with warm cups in ungloved hands.