And yeah, women want white collar jobs too. Go figure - A diverse population of women, with different abilities, interests and levels of education, are all fighting for the right to seek diverse forms of employment. Fighting for equality in one sphere doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten about the others.
Just because you aren’t paying attention to the feminist movement doesn’t mean that the feminist movement is nonexistent.
Many jobs such as these (although I don’t know that this is the case for these exactly) have been denied to women based on the idea that doing a particular type of labor or being in a particular environment would be too harmful to women.
And by “too harmful to women” I of course mean “too harmful to their uterus.*”
Like, there was a case back in the… 80s, I think? where some women worked at some sort of factory or plant or something. (I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a lot of the details of this— Google, however, informs me that I was right and it was in the 80s).
Anyway, there were hazardous materials in the plant. And, using laws that were intendedto protect pregnant women, the company basically realized, “hey, wait a minute, we don’t need to have any women working here and we can get away with it!” Because, see, hazardous materials like that are bad for fetus.
So the company basically told a bunch of women “you can’t work here anymore because you can have babies and it’s not safe for you.” But, you know, one thing they could do would be to get sterilized, and then they could keep working there. So women did— women who would not otherwise chosen to have been sterilized got sterilized because it was either that or lose the jobs that they desperately needed.
Stuff like this gets ignored all the time. I hear the argument all the time “well women can’t be drafted…” Well, first off, let’s set aside the whole issue of the draft because that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. But you’re acting like there aren’t any women who would want to volunteer to be in the military. There are plenty. Only lots don’t because they’re discouraged from it or aren’t allowed to serve in the role they want. Or they dojoin but often leave because of severe sexual harassment and even sexual assault.
Saying that women “don’t want” these jobs is ridiculous on multiple levels— but what it doesdo is work to affirm the idea of women as illogical, weak, and “naturally” not suited for particular jobs.
*It is important to acknowledge that being a woman =/= having a uterus. However, such associations are made and utilized in this particular discourse (i.e. people equate being a woman with having a uterus, and that gets tied up in the discourse surrounding excluding women from jobs).
Access to clean water is a basic human need – and 70% of people in Nigeria don’t have it. Watch @UzoAduba campaign with us and @ProcterGamble to change this on the final episode of #ACTIVATE, Thursday 10/9c on @NatGeoChannel and online at globalcitizen.org/activate.
Would you imagine that 1.8 BILLION people globally use a source of drinking water contaminated with feces?
Recently on assignment with @water_compass an organization whose strategy is definitely working, trying to make clean water accessible to people along the cattle corridor ( specific in Sembabule and Masaka) but targeting communities where disease transmission is most likely occur.
These guys install water systems that pump water from underground, which is available all year round, clean for direct consumption and very affordable.
During the 2 days’ shoot, a number of facts were broken to my ears and they’re quite worrying.
Imagine; - Diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death of children under five years of age in Uganda.
- 35% of the rural population in Uganda does not have access to a safe water source
- Hygiene and sanitation related diseases currently contribute to 70% of the disease burden in Uganda.
- Only 17% of the rural people in Uganda have access to improved sanitation
Please check out their website to support the cause.
