Chapter 12 - The Axis of Equality

"A women has so many parts of her body, life is very hard indeed." 

- Lu Xin, "Anxious Thoughts on Natural Breasts" (1927)

For this week's discussion, we focused on the axis of equality. We started off by talking about women's successes we see in today's society. In the book, "Half the Sky", Kristof and WuDunn give an example of women's successes by telling the story of a Chinese woman, Zhang Yin, and how she started off working $6 a month to becoming the world's richest self-made woman. Through Yin's story, we were surprised to know the fact that 6 out of 10 richest self-made women in the world today are Chinese (206). Looking back at China in the past century, from the period when foot-binding, child marriage, concubinage, and female infanticide were practiced, to the present days, we can clearly see how the view of women's role in China had evolved. Nowadays, Chinese women are more involved in the working fields; they are thriving to contribute to the society and also to earn a living for their families. Seeing how women helped the economy in many ways, as a result, China has moved on from many of its cultural traditions and is starting to have a higher respect to women in the working fields. 

In comparison to women's successes economically, we then discussed about how women are view in playing male dominant sports. Viewing from the media, we don't normally see women in national teams.We also pointed out that UC Davis women sports are hidden from other sports. Even though not many women participate in male dominant sports, we do see examples that women around the globe is beginning to get more involved in male-dominated pursuits such as Xie Jun, who became the first woman's world champion in chess in China, and Abby Wambach, a famous American professional soccer player. 

We then moved on to discussing how women involved in politics. In the book, Kristof and WuDunn give credit to Rwanda as being a great example on how women are involved in politics. 

In the video, "Women Rank High in Rwanda's Government", it talks about how Rwanda's recovered from the 1994 genocide through concentrating in getting more women to be involve in government. It was very inspiring to see the reconciliation between the two groups, Tutsi and Hulu, to be united again after the genocide. What is more encouraging is knowing the fact that Rwanda is now the nation with the highest share of women members of any parliament in the world (212). If interested in learning more about the genocide and its victims, feel free to check out the book, "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" by Immaculee Llibagiza. 

Next, we discussed the second half of the chapter about the organization, Women for Women International. This organization connects women sponsors with needy women that are in conflict or post-conflict countries  (257). More information of this organization can be found through this website: www.womenforwomen.org.

An activity we did was to imagine our selves being one of the sponsors in Women for Women International and to write a letter to the woman we are sponsoring. Questions that arose were: how will we start that relationship? Is there anything we want to know about them?

In summary of the activity, here is some of the points and questions that came up which we would like to add in the letter: 

• a basic introduction of our selves
• What do they enjoy doing?
• What is one thing that they really wanted? Is there anything else that they want besides money?
• Is there any challenges they have overcome or might still be facing?
• What are some of their goals?

From this activity, we pointed out that money might not be the only thing that these women need, but friendship as well. Besides money, these women need a friend who will encourage them, check on them from time to time, and help them grow and prosper. Through writing letters, sponsors can build this relationship with them.

In the section, Tears Over Time Magazine, of the chapter, we were introduced to Zainab Salbi, the founder of  Women for Women International. Here is the video about Zainab's story and how she created Women for Women International:

During the discussion, the question of how does the organization select the women they wanted to sponsor arose. We were curious to know whether or not if there is an interview processor, as well as how these women join the organization. To answer these questions, here is a picture of the process taken from the Women for Women International webpage:

Zainab's story had inspired so many people to get involve in helping other women in needy countries. One who were greatly inspired was Lisa Shannon. After sponsoring two raped victims through Women for Women International,  Lisa started her own organization called Congo for Women, which turned out to be very successful. Here is a video about Lisa Shannon and Congo for Women:  http://www.oprah.com/world/Lisa-Shannon-Visits-the-Women-of-the-Congo-Video

Lastly, here's a video that we didn't have time to watch in the discussion. The video talks about one of the themes of our seminar: law vs. society & culture.