Los Altos Town Crier » Women’s activism worldwide subject of Morning Forum lecture

By Laura Brown

$Image from article Women\'s activism worldwide subject of Morning Forum lecture$

Kavita Ramdas is a study in contradictions. Born in a country that considers being a female a “huge misfortune,” she is a feminist. Granddaughter and daughter of India’s highest-ranking Naval officers, she opposes the war in Iraq. An Indian, she is married to a Pakistani.

Ramdas, the President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, told the March 18 Los Altos Morning Forum audience that from AIDS to the environment, “there is not a single issue in the world today that is not a women’s issue.” Her organization is dedicated to seed, support and strengthen women’s rights groups overseas. Founded in 1987, the Fund has given over 25 million dollars to more than 2,000 groups in 160 countries, focusing on small grants ranging from $500 to $15,000 to women’s groups addressing everything from voting rights in Mongolia to female genital mutilation in Africa.

“There are almost too many statistics to quote,” Ramdas said. She listed some of them:

Despite these grim facts, Ramdas’ speech was full of optimism, saying women who have been the victims of violence and oppression are becoming the leaders of change in the world, envisioning “a different future for our children and ourselves.”

She cited examples of projects successfully addressing specific issues in various countries:

In the Arab world, women are mobilizing to protest “honor killings” which go on every day across the Middle East, according to Ramdas. Men murder their daughters and sisters if they are deemed to have sullied the family honor through some sexual misconduct, and are never punished because the killings are considered crimes of honor.

Ramdas said “Women’s empowerment is one of the best vaccines against AIDS,” citing a “Lysistrata collective bargaining technique” used by women in Uganda - withholding sex unless men agreed to abstain from multiple partners and use condoms - which has resulted in a decline in HIV infection in that country, unlike other African nations where the disease rate is skyrocketing. As women become more economically independent, they are less vulnerable to coerced or forced sexual activity, and thus less at risk for contracting and spreading sexual disease. The economic empowerment of women also gives them more say in matters of birth control and family size, reducing runaway birthrates, she said.

The Global Women’s Fund accepts no government funding, and is supported by large and small foundations, some corporations and individual donors. One of the most gratifying things Ramdas finds is that many former grantees become donors, and as a result, the number of non-profit women’s organizations has multiplied throughout the world.

Still an Indian citizen although she has lived in the United States since she won a scholarship to Mt. Holyoke College, then went to Princeton for a Master’s Degree in International Development, Ramdas lives in Palo Alto with her husband and nine year old daughter. Before coming to the Global Fund, she was a program officer for the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. Saying that America’s greatest strength is its diversity, she urged the audience to reach out to foreigners and engage with the rest of the world. “The United States is still held as a beacon for values that all hold dear - equality and justice,” she said.

More than 50 percent of the HIV-positive are women;
One-third of all women have been beaten or raped;
Rape as a weapon of war is increasing. Seventy percent of the Rwandan women were raped during the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic war;
Seventy percent of the world’s labor is done by women, yet women own less than 1 percent of the world’s assets;
Sex-selected abortion has led to a birthrate of 853 females to 1,000 males in India.
In Israel, Israeli and Palestinian women have worked together to achieve common understanding, and addressed the United Nations Security Council to present their vision of a shared Jerusalem;
In Zimbabwe, a 14-year-old girl who had been raped by her teacher formed a network of other abused 13- to 16-year-olds and began a nationwide march to protest sexual abuse in schools, They forced the president of the country to address the issue which had gone unnoticed and unpunished, preventing young women from attending school;
In 1996, the fund granted $4,000 to teach women in Mongolia to vote in the first open election ever held in that country. It resulted in a 78 percent voting rate by women, 90 percent in favor of democracy, ousting the communist regime. “One wishes they had done the same in Florida in 2000,” Ramdas said.