Sunday, September 16, 2007

Righteous Indignation



While doing my reading for class today, the author pointed out that, in America, women are completely over represented when it comes to poverty. We are not talking a simple majority of 50 plus 1. NO, no we are talking a significant majority. I dare not speculate to the number, but I am angry. Population wise, women constitute half so the face of poverty should not be a woman. It should be like flipping a coin - half the time you get the face of a man. But that is not the world we live in. This makes poverty not just an issue of income, but an issue of gender as well. What makes me angrier is that I cannot answer the "why". Why do we tolerate this? Why had I not realized this earlier?? I want to find out. I want to find out why, we as a society choose to ignore this fact. I want to know what I can do to change it. I have found my passion. Now, I must focus my passion and anger into something productive. I believe a quotation from Rage Against the Machine is appropriate: "Your anger is a gift."

1 comment:

Chelsea said...

I've heard similar statistical inequalities about outside the US (but not inside, so that's really interesting) and one of the things I love about Heifer International is how they direct many of their resources specifically to helping women. They believe that enabling women to support their families empowers them and they then educate their daughters and gain more respect within the community. I wonder if there are different reasons for such inequalities here in America, though, as we do educate women, but fail them elsewhere.