Women of The World:

We Salute You!

 

Edited by Adel Alsalman

For decades, women have struggled not only for their own rights, but also for their societies’ liberation from oppression as a whole. In the Arab uprisings, for instance, women and girls took a central role in protests to bring down one dictatorial regime after another.

But in a world plagued with war and poverty, women remain unequal to men when it comes to opportunities for education and work, salary schemes, and social recognition.

In most Western countries, women’s salaries remain well below their male peers’. In much of Africa, women work without basic social rights and also deal with raising a family. In Latin America, women face patriarchal systems that fail to recognize their central role toward social development. In much of Asia, women deal with cultural, religious, and economic obstacles to their own fulfillment as individuals.

At the same time, corrupt and violent regimes the world over treat women detainees just as badly as their male peers, if not worse. Sexual violence remains a characteristic of war and conflict everywhere. Poverty forces women and men alike to resort to inventive measures to provide for their children.

But violence and injustice do not only bring out the worst in humanity; they also force women to engage in struggle while maintaining a semblance of normalcy for their children.

Yet in spite of all the obstacles they face, many women display magnificent courage. On International Women’s Day, we commemorate not only the struggle for women’s rights, but also the struggle for freedom from oppression as a whole. Because without women, the dream of liberation is impossible.

An Indian women carries firewood on her head as she walks past an advertisement billboard in Siliguri on 7 March 2011 on the eve of International Women's Day. International Women's Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women's Day is marked annually on March 8. (Photo: AFP - Diptendu Dutta)

A burqa-clad Afghan woman walks down a street in Kabul. As winter sets in across Central Asia, many Afghans struggle to provide adequate food and shelter for their families. (Photo: AFP - Shah Marai)

A women picks vegetables at a communal farm on 15 February 2012 in Diagle, central west Senegal. In the arid rural areas, which have been put in a tough situation due to droughts and bad harvests, locals no longer believe in their countries politicians. (Photo: AFP - Seyllou)

A woman wearing a "Niqab" takes a picture with her phone of the Salafist demonstration in Martyr square, Beirut on 4 March 2012. The "Niqab" is still a very controversial topic in many parts of the world. (Photo: Haytham al-Moussawi)

A woman attends a masquerade party during Carnival celebrations in Salvador 16 February 2012. (Photo: REUTERS - Ueslei Marcelino)

A woman and a domestic worker walk past a garbage truck, in Beirut, on 8 March 2012. Numerous of local and international NGO's are engaged in a rigorous battle for reforming labor laws. (Photo: Marwan Tahtah)

Maria Jose Cristerna, 36, a mother of four, tattoo artist and former lawyer, applies make-up to her face at her home in Guadalajara 7 February 2012. Cristerna, who is dubbed "Vampire Woman" but prefers to be identified as "Jaguar Woman", had her first tattoo when she was 14 and decided to physically transform herself after having gone through 10 years of domestic violence in her first marriage. (Photo: REUTERS - Alejandro Acosta)

A woman dries her saree, a traditional cloth used for women's clothing, after washing it on the banks of river Tawi in Jammu, India 3 March 2012. (Photo: REUTERS - Mukesh Gupta)

Cleaner Emilia Rodriguez, 78, stands at the doorway of her home in Havana 6 March 2012. Rodriguez, the granddaughter of Spanish immigrants, has been a state employee all her adult life. When she was 17, she started work in a clinic, doing cleaning and feeding bedridden people. For the last 30 years she has been cleaning apartment buildings, receiving a monthly salary of 250 pesos ($10). (Photo: REUTERS - Enrique de la Osa)

Migdalia Matamoros, a member of the cooperative "El Recuerdo" from the Federation of Cooperatives of women producers of Nicaragua, rests after working on her field of onions ahead of International Woman's Day in Ciudad Dario 5 March 2012. Women in Nicaragua makes up for around 42 percent of the agricultural labor force. (Photo: REUTERS - Oswaldo Rivas)

Hokom Al, a disabled woman, walks near her home in a rural area in Khartoum 7 March 2012. Hokom Al, 45 years old, was born without hands. (Photo: REUTERS - Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

A Ninjutsu practitioner performs a split as members of various Ninjutsu schools showcase their skills to the media in a gym at Karaj, 45 km (28 miles) northwest of Tehran 13 February 2012. Currently about 3000 to 3500 women train in Ninjutsu in independently run clubs throughout Iran working under the supervision of the Ministry of Sports' Martial Arts Federation. (Photo: REUTERS - Caren Firouz)