In the dawn of 2018, we’ve already witnessed a wave of women rising. Women are standing up, speaking out, and continuing to organize and resist. It’s a contentious time, it’s a difficult time—and yet, I love it because our protests seem to be working. Within the first few days of the new year, Hoda is waking up with Savannah on the Today Show (although I’d advocate for a salary bump), Reese and Shonda said #TimesUp, and Gretchen is beginning a new reign over Miss America.
As a woman who arrived at her feminist identity relatively late in my life—that is, après college, après marriage, and somewhat après kids—I’m taking full advantage of this inspiring moment in history to advocate for women and girls. And I’m fortunate that my day job—heading up The Girl Project here at Glamour—affords me the opportunity to channel that energy into tackling the discrimination that girls and women face in the United States, like high dropout rates, bullying and teenage pregnancy—as well as countries like Afghanistan, Nicaragua where gender-based violence and child marriage are still very prevalent.
There can be this urge to prioritize the issues facing women and girls in the United States, because they feel so close to home. Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of things in 2018 to anger, enrage, and scare us, as women. And yes, these things do scare me as a mother of daughters and a son. The #MeToo movement has illustrated beyond a doubt that women and girls of all ages have suffered violence and trauma for too long, powerlessly and silently, often alone, and that any form of justice has been unsatisfactory at best—nonexistent at worst.
But amidst all of the scary things, what I fear most is that we may fail to leverage this powerful moment in American feminism to also address the plight of severely underprivileged women around the world. Because even in this era of empowerment, as more and more American women are finding their voices, there are countless women around the world who remain invisible, hanging on at the margins of society, with no hope of escaping the persistent abuse or pursuing an independent and stable life. This is our opportunity to stand up acknowledge that the things we may take for granted as American women — our privilege, stature, education, and influence — are the very weapons we can use to fight against the injustices that continue to plague women and girls around the world.
Here in the U.S., this means fighting for women who work low-paying jobs, with limited access to health care and other benefits, who endure horrifying abuse at the hands of their supervisors or other employees (read: men). That is why the #TimesUp initiative is significant, both symbolically and practically. Because when well-resourced, influential, and powerful women begin saying, not just #MeToo, but #HerToo, people are forced to listen and real change can happen.
Globally, gender-based violence and sexually based offenses are two major wrongs that we, American women, can help tackle on behalf of our sisters. According to UNICEF, as many as 200 million girls and women who are alive today have experienced female genital mutilation or cutting. In sub-Saharan Africa, child marriage affects four out of 10 young girls are married before the age of 18, and some even have husbands before they’ve reached double digits. And girls and women continue to be disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Research from The Global Fund indicates that in the hardest-hit countries, girls account for more than 80% of all new infections and girls can be up to eight times more likely to be living with HIV than their male peers. Let’s do the math on that one—if girls are eight times more likely to be HIV-infected than their male peers, who is infecting them? You guessed it: older men.
We all know this list of injustices against women abroad could go on, just as the list of men who have harassed, assaulted, abused, and degraded women will continue to grow with the support of movements and initiatives like Time’s Up and #MeToo. And it is not my goal to create false equivalence or divert our attention from the headlines at home to women halfway across the world. I’m saying that we have to pay attention to both.
It’s a small world that’s growing smaller by the day. We cannot afford to pretend that the issues that women face in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and factories across the United States are not deeply connected to those faced by women in the villages of South Africa, the slums of Cambodia, and the refugee camps of Jordan. We have a responsibility to stand up and speak out, for ourselves and for those without a voice. For those who cannot stand on their own. We have to fight for our dear sisters.
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