Don't assume it can't happen here
Staff Editorial
Issue date: 3/29/04 Section: From WCL
- Page 1 of 1
In this issue, you can read of the horrific restrictions and abuses inflicted upon women in other countries. The article likely will have an unintended effect of making women at WCL feel secure. We aren't stoned for adultery. We aren't killed by our brothers for flirting with men. We may go where we please - whether it be law school, the corner office or the corner market - without harassment, beatings or imprisonment.
Compared to women in many other countries, we live in a utopia.
But also in this issue, you can learn of the increasing restrictions on the rights of U.S. women. We're slowly but surely losing the ability to control when and whether we have children. We cannot walk alone at night without fearing rape. Our government ignores the coercion of poverty and risk of domestic violence while blindly "promoting" heterosexual marriage for single mothers, often withholding vital public funding unless they comply. Despite rhetoric that the sexes are equal under the law, people scoff at the idea of an Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing such a claim.
Before anyone argues that the restrictions on American women aren't comparable to those of women in other countries, consider this: Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the rights of Aghan women in major cities were comparable to our own. Fifty percent of college students, teachers and government workers were women, and women made up 40 percent of doctors.
In Iraq, women once possessed more rights than women anywhere else in the Middle East. Until Saddam Hussein began imposing anti-woman legislation in the '90s, women were the most highly educated in the region, regularly worked outside the home and could even run for public office.
Yet due to changes in their government policies, the societies in which these once liberated women live devolved, and their rights were stripped away. Are we really not so vulnerable to the same fate?
It may take women in these countries generations to rebuild what they once had. Men in their societies have become accustomed to the comfort of possessing complete control over women, and they are not willing to give it up so easily.
This is why it is important for us - as women who still possess our basic human rights - to fight to retain what we already have, as well as labor for further equality. We cannot sit idly by and assume that at the very least, we will maintain our status quo with little to no effort. We are currently living under one of the most anti-woman administrations in recent U.S. history. And if we're not careful, one day we could wake up in a completely different reality.
As future attorneys, we have an even greater duty. Whether one intends to work for a firm or a public interest organization, as women we must use our training in the legal system to ensure that we do not succumb to a fate similar to women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Every slip, every restriction - no matter how mild - counts against us.
Compared to women in many other countries, we live in a utopia.
But also in this issue, you can learn of the increasing restrictions on the rights of U.S. women. We're slowly but surely losing the ability to control when and whether we have children. We cannot walk alone at night without fearing rape. Our government ignores the coercion of poverty and risk of domestic violence while blindly "promoting" heterosexual marriage for single mothers, often withholding vital public funding unless they comply. Despite rhetoric that the sexes are equal under the law, people scoff at the idea of an Equal Rights Amendment guaranteeing such a claim.
Before anyone argues that the restrictions on American women aren't comparable to those of women in other countries, consider this: Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the rights of Aghan women in major cities were comparable to our own. Fifty percent of college students, teachers and government workers were women, and women made up 40 percent of doctors.
In Iraq, women once possessed more rights than women anywhere else in the Middle East. Until Saddam Hussein began imposing anti-woman legislation in the '90s, women were the most highly educated in the region, regularly worked outside the home and could even run for public office.
Yet due to changes in their government policies, the societies in which these once liberated women live devolved, and their rights were stripped away. Are we really not so vulnerable to the same fate?
It may take women in these countries generations to rebuild what they once had. Men in their societies have become accustomed to the comfort of possessing complete control over women, and they are not willing to give it up so easily.
This is why it is important for us - as women who still possess our basic human rights - to fight to retain what we already have, as well as labor for further equality. We cannot sit idly by and assume that at the very least, we will maintain our status quo with little to no effort. We are currently living under one of the most anti-woman administrations in recent U.S. history. And if we're not careful, one day we could wake up in a completely different reality.
As future attorneys, we have an even greater duty. Whether one intends to work for a firm or a public interest organization, as women we must use our training in the legal system to ensure that we do not succumb to a fate similar to women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Every slip, every restriction - no matter how mild - counts against us.
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