101 million women

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle." --Erin Majors

I am a sister, a mother, a daughter, a woman.
A woman first.
A woman who cares about other women:
daughters, sisters, mothers.

But being a woman can be dangerous, even deadly.

I've started reading the Pulitzer-prize winning book HALF THE SKY by Nicholas D. Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn. It is a passionate call to arms about our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

They quote Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning economist, who wrote that "More than 100 million women are missing". Vanished. Taken. Every year 2 million girls worldwide go missing. These statistics leave me cold.

Being a girl is lethal in many parts of the globe.

More numbing facts:
It appears that more girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine "gendercide" in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. In China, just as many infant girls die every week as protesters died in Tiananmen square. In India, a "bride burning"-- to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry takes place every 2 hours; in Pakistan 5,000 women and girls have been doused in kerosene and set alight by family members or in-laws, or perhaps worse, seared with acid for perceived disobedience just in the last 9 years. One hundred thousand girls a day are routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels. Maternal mortality still claims the life of one woman per minute.

Besides these chilling stats, the book tells the stories of extraordinary women--
who struggle, are sold, are enslaved, are beaten, and suffer devastating experiences...
And then are transformed.
They escape, they get help, they build up from nothing, they thrive, they heal.
It is a book of frightening experiences but also of hope.
Pragmatic, inspirational and essential.
So I'm spreading the word...

I have a daughter now. A sweet vulnerable little girl.
I will raise her to be strong. Strong and smart and fearless.
Like my mother raised us.

I will teach her to read, study, meditate and think for herself.
I will teach her to defend herself too.
She can be a dancing Kung-fu master.

Education is a serious affair.
We must refine and hold on to our own values,
and pay the high price necessary to live those values.

What will I teach my daughter?
How will I help her unleash her potential?
And how will she help other women, her sisters do the same?

10 Datos sobre el tráfico de personas

1. Existen 27 milliones de esclavos alrededor del mundo. (1)
2. Al menos 14.500 esclavos son introducidos en los EE.UU cada año. (2)
3. El costo promedio de un esclavo es de $90. (3)
4. El gobierno de los EE.UU estima que entre 600,000-800,000 personas son traficadas cada año entre bordes internacionales. (4)
5. 1/6 to 1/2 de este grupo de personas son niños. (5)
6. En el 2004, 218 milliones de niños cayeron víctimas del trabajo infantil. (6)
7. Se puede encontrar esclavos en todos los países del mundo, inclusive en EE.UU. (7)
8. La decisiones que tomes y la manera como consumas afectarán la esclavitud a nivel global, depende de ti que sea de forma positiva, apoya el comercio justo.
9. Es posible eradicar la esclavitud en 25 años. (9)
10. "Productos manchados por la esclavitud probablemente ya forman parte de tu día a día."(8)

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