Girl’s Plight
Wandering within the great walls of the Boston State house, I came across the Girl’s initiative advocacy day. Like girls across the world, girls in Massachusetts face specific gender based problems and the advocacy group is working on new policies to bring about a gender-responsive programming for girls.
At the event I also had the chance to speak with Patricia Driscoll, the executive Director of Girls Inc. of Lynn. Her institution caters for about 1500 girls between the ages of 6 to 18 in the town of Lynn. The agency believes that it is important to provide a safe and supportive girl-focused environment that empowers the girls to their best potential.
There is a ‘bottom up’ approach and a ‘top to bottom’ approach to women empowerment. Coming to the state house and presenting to the elected officials is a good way to raise awareness and is perhaps a ‘bottom meeting top’ approach. Although it is a practice that happens, women empowerment literature does not always document the ‘bottom meeting top’ approach except in the form of the clash between the bottom and the top. An example is the struggle of activists such as Arundhati Roy.
Perhaps the ‘bottom meeting top’ approach entails that the top and the bottom agree to listen to each other. In the Girl’s Initiative scenario, there is a good proportion of women in elected positions that understand and listen to the plight of the girls. Women at the top are then more inclined to take up the issues put forward by those working on the ground with the girls.
What about the girls whose interests are not represented in decision making? They still face gender specific challenges. In traditional and very stratified patriarchal societies in the Pacific, girls still have to be given the permission to speak. In war torn Eastern Congo, sexual violence against women and girls is for the soldiers and militiamen, another weapon of war. In several states across India, girls are discriminated against even before they are born though female feticide.
Who speaks for these girls? And the more so, who listens to those who dare speak?
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