In an interview on Changing the World for Good

Your first choice, Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is a collection of stories about women all over the world. In the opening pages they talk about ‘gendercide’, and how the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world steals more lives in any given decade ‘than all the genocides of the 20th century’. One of the Millennium Development Goals is to try and reach gender equality. From all you have seen travelling around the world and from the stories in the book do you think it is happening?

Sadly, in much of the world life is not better for women and girls. But I think there is a growing awareness in developing countries and I have seen clear evidence of that. There are strong women everywhere and many, even in the most remote corners of the world, are taking a very strong stand. Still, too many women and girls are sentenced to a life of hardship, deprivation and oppression.

Women across the world are doing so much of the labour without having any rights or reaping their share of the profits. There is a tragic lack of respect for women and girls and a failure to see women as being equal to men.

You may have seen in August how women, girls and babies too were raped in the Congo in one incident. This sort of brutality is not focused on a specific woman but it is a fundamental lack of respect for all women. Obviously, this must change. Change will come through education.  

I mean, I have been in conversation with women and asked – how many women were in your village before it was destroyed? And all too often the women will say: ‘Well, we don’t know numbers, ask the men – they know about numbers.’ It is not because they are not brilliant, which they are, or courageous, which they are. But, because of the way they are brought up, they think they don’t need to know, and they defer to the men. And the men assume they have that right. But this is beginning to change.

I hear there are various schemes in the Congo looking at how to change men’s view of women because many of them refer to them as being like objects with no value. Sometimes they don’t even think of them as proper human beings.

Yes, and we have seen that in different ways at different times in different countries. I mean, in my own country here in America, not that long ago African Americans were not regarded as a full human beings. They were denied the rights available to white people. Even the Founding Fathers reflected this. The right of American women to vote was not passed until 1919. Even I grew up in a generation where women on TV were largely in the kitchen.  

Is there a particular person that you have met recently who is changing women’s situations?

Yes, I was recently at a youth conference in Uganda where there were equal amounts of young men and young women who were extraordinary and they were discussing the Millennium Goals and the best ways to go about realising them in their respective countries. But the striking thing was that they themselves represented the force and strength that will be needed. There were young people who were already reaching out in their communities.

Also, an unsung and invaluable influence in remote areas of many of the countries I have visited are the aid workers themselves. Often they are women and they are working in positions of authority; organising, distributing, meeting people’s needs. Men have told me they have found themselves compelled to rethink their views of what a woman is because of the aid workers.  

There are signs of the beginning of change but it won’t be fast enough for my satisfaction. In my view patience is hugely overrated. I am not sure it is a virtue at all! Again, we come back to the goal of education. Change won’t happen without education.