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The Peace Diaries Radio Program was broadcast during the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa from August 26 through September 4, 2002. It was broadcast to Africa, Middle East and Europe. |
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SHOW 10: GENDER EQUALITY |
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SCRIPT, SHOW 10 00:01 – 01:02 SHOW OPENING, KNOWLEDGEITRUST, KIDS’ QOUTES, KAREN QUOTE 01:03 – 01:25 (Narrated Introduction, Tessa van Staden) According to a Ghanaian proverb, if you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a nation. The center of family- and most community-life across the developing world, women still remain the most marginalized. But education can make all the difference – for them, and their families, says agricultural economist, Per Andersen… 01:26 – 02:19 (Per Andersen, agricultural economist with Food Policy Research Institute) * I think education, in the sense of educating girls and women, is very important. But that creates tension. These kinds of changes in the gender balance, if you like, create a great deal of tension, so there’s a need to educate the men as well. It’s not all that different, in my opinion, from the national-level problems where you have national governments who put very low priority on improving the situation for poor people because they don’t understand it’s in their best interest to do so. I think many men do not recognize that it is in their best interest to recognize the role that women play & to have a more equal decision-making structure. 02:20 – 02:34 (Narration, TvS) Andersen says years in the field with the Food Policy Research Institute show that there is a lot of work to be done if government policies regarding the reality of rural farming and gender roles are to be adjusted. 02:35 – 03:20 (Andersen ctd.) My guess is that women will continue to be very important in food production in Africa & in the future, but there is of course a tendency for men to replace women where a change takes place that results in more prestige in agricultural production. There are many externally-funded projects, like bringing in new technology, or improving water management and so on that have resulted in men being drawn into the production, because suddenly it became a prestigious thing to be associated with. My guess is that women are still doing most of the work. 03:21 – 03:34 (Narration, TvS) Television journalist, Cynthia Tornquest, recently interviewed founder & director of the Intl Institute for Peace & Education, Betty Reardon, and asked her to discuss gender equality (or lack thereof)… 03:34 – 04:09 (Betty Reardon, founder & director of Intl. Institute for Peace & Education) Women have something a prior claim to equality because they represent half the human race and because no matter what the society, they have been excluded from power and from privilege, whether they are of the upper classes, or lower classes, and that’s true in Western society, Eastern society, North and South. 04:10 – 04:16 (Cynthia Tornquest, television journalist) How is gender equality important to laying the groundwork for peace? 04:17 – 04:56 (Betty Reardon ctd.) Well, gender equality is very important to any major global issue. In fact, gender equality is a factor which is essential to any level of human organization, if that organization purports to be democratic and just. The general principle of democracy is human equality – which doesn’t mean that we’re all the same – it means that we’re all very different, but that we have equal human worth and equal claim to whatever resources are available in our society. 04:57 – 05:08 (Narration, TvS) Ecological phenomenologist, Tamra Raven, has worked with the international council of women for years, and says that sustainable development is directly linked to educating women. 05:09 – 05:36 (Tamra Raven, ecological phenomenologist, Intl. Council of Women) We know that the education of women is so important because of its correlation with population, having women have more money; they have smaller families. We must educate girls! We can’t just pay lip service to it, we have to say we want to educate girls because it makes a difference to our survival & that means we have to implement the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It bears directly on my grandchildren’s survival. 05:37 – 05:42 (Narration, TvS) Raven emphasizes that women play a central role in decreasing the world’s population 05:42 – 06:14 (Tamra Raven ctd.) We have to reduce the population; we have to get down below 6.2 Billion. We will not get there ‘till middle part of the century; but we have to move towards reducing population because of the concept of carrying capacity. The concept of carrying capacity is not very complicated: it just says that some places have good soils and good predictability of water & water quality and you can grow lots of food to feed the people there & some soils don’t. 06:15 – 06:44 (Narration, TvS) The Food Gardens Foundation in South Africa was founded 2-and-a-half decades ago by 2 women who wanted to train the unemployed and rural poor how to raise fresh vegetables on the smallest plot of land possible. Food Gardens volunteer, Betty Handerty, says although the gardens help many women, they still face huge obstacles. Handerty worked in Drift Sands, a community outside Cape Town, and remembers how a young mother and resident, Edith, struggled to survive… 06:45 – 07:37 (Betty Handerty, volunteer with Food Gardens Foundation) Her husband had abandoned her for another woman when her youngest child was born, and she struggled and then she managed to get one of the children through college. Then he reappeared in their old age, so she took him back in. In the meantime we had introduced the women to rearing chickens, so that they could have eggs to eat, eggs to sell & manure for their gardens. Edith’s family in the Transkei had some problem and she had to go, so she left her husband, Wellington, in charge. When she came back there were only 11 hens. So she went to Wellington and said, "Where’s my other hen?" And he said, "I ate it." Well, Edith was devastated, because that was part of her income gone. 07:38 – 07:46 (Narration, TvS) Teaching and promoting understanding between learners is what Betty Reardon, founder and director of the International Institute for peace and education, has dedicated her life to 07:47 – 08:20 (Betty Reardon) Peace education views all human beings as learners, and we see peace education as an ongoing, life-long process. In fact, one that will probably last for as long as the human experiment lasts because there’s just no end that we can say, "This is peace." The issue is how do we try constantly to maintain what is good in society and overcome that which harms human beings. 08:20 – 08:24 (Cynthia Tornquest) Does this include world leaders? 08:24 – 08:44 (Betty Reardon) It includes everybody and, most especially, we would like the opportunity to engage in an educative process with world leaders, and with leaders at every level of political organization because it is at every level that the violence occurs, the causes can be found and the alternatives can be developed. 08:45 – 08:52 (Narration) Betty Reardon, founder and director of the International Institute for peace and education 08:53 – 09:35 SHOW CLOSE  |
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