First, a confession: I am a coffee shop liberal. Literally, I am sitting in front of a laptop right now, sipping a cup of coffee. I can’t escape a stereotype that describes my actual behavior.
Being a coffee shop liberal means that I can ponder patriarchy in the world without experiencing its most severe consequences. Feminism, in my personal life, is more of an ideological than a physical battle.
This is not the case for the majority of girls and women in the developing world, who disproportionately bear the brunt of poverty and the maladies that come with it: sexual assault, sex trafficking, genital mutilation, malnutrition, death in childbirth, death in childhood — you get the big, ugly picture.
Even before the physical structures that supported their lives and families crumbled in the earthquake this month, Haitian women suffered. According to Haitian women’s rights organization Kay Fanm, more than 72 percent of Haitian girls surveyed are victims of rape, and 40 percent are victims of domestic violence. The tyranny of sexual violence is one product of decades of political instability in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation, and the post-catastrophe chaos will only exacerbate the problem.
In addition to the increased threat of sexual assault, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional arm of the United Nation’s World Health Organization, identifies a number of other factors that cause women to face disproportionate adversity in the aftermath of natural disasters. Women, for example, are more likely to be caretakers for the young, the sick, the disabled and the elderly, often leaving them immobile when mobility is crucial to find safe ground, water, food and medical resources.
In a press release last week, PAHO representatives expressed concern over the lack of aid reaching Haitian women. “I am deeply disturbed by pictures in the media of Haitians lined up and receiving relief aid, and they are all men,” said Dr. Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo, a “top expert on gender issues” with PAHO. “Do we know that resources are getting shared equally by these men and other members of their families?”
In response to the suffering of women in post-earthquake Haiti, a variety of non-profits are providing health care and economic resources to the nation, with a particular focus on women’s health and economic leadership. MADRE, an international non-profit with a focus on women’s rights, has set up a supply chain across the Dominican Republic to bring medical supplies to a sister organization, Zanmi Lasante. MADRE relies on an increasingly favored model of community development. The group distributes resources to women and then allows women to distribute resources throughout their communities where they identify the greatest need.
MADRE’s Web site asserts that the same qualities that immobilize women during times of crisis make them especially capable in leading relief efforts:  
“We know from experience that when relief is distributed by women, it has the best chance of reaching those most in need. That’s not because women are morally superior. Rather, it is because their roles as caretakers in the community means that they know where every family lives, which households have new babies or disabled elders, and how to reach remote communities even in disaster conditions.”
Predictably, the very concept of focusing disaster relief dollars on women and women’s health has garnered criticism from “men’s rights” advocates on the Web. “The same people who stand ever-ready to complain that men have too much importance in public life, now tell us that we have none at all,” said Robert Franklin on mensnewsdaily.com. Presumably, “the same people” Franklin refers to are radical feminists.
Actually, MADRE’s model is a good example of a fairly mainstream trend in community development talk. Last year, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn published “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” a book arguing for female empowerment as the missing link in addressing poverty, overpopulation, extremism and disease throughout the world.
“When women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier,” WuDunn and Kristof wrote in a special to The New York Times. “Half the Sky” has garnered praise from Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton (crazy feminist radicals, I know) and sparked joint campaigns between the Nike Foundation and CARE, an international humanitarian organization.
If you’re like me (perpetually sedentary at the coffee shop), I encourage you to at least donate to Haiti relief — if not to women-focused organizations like MADRE, then to other efforts with a similarly intricate knowledge of community development and global health.
Partners in Health, which you may have seen around campus, has also been heartily endorsed by women’s health advocates like Boston-based non-profit Our Bodies, Ourselves. One better (I’ll try): Leave the coffee shop and get involved.
[email protected]