Every day we wake up in the mornings, watching the sun rise, getting
our morning coffee, dressing up and leaving for work or school. We get into our
cars, hit the traffic on the freeways, arriving at our offices or colleges,
spending time socializing with others. We barely pay attention to what is going
on around us. We do not even think that
some people actually wake up in a complete hunger, they do not even know what
“Starbucks” is, they have never actually seen money and took a nice long shower
in a clean bathroom. And I do fall into
that category unfortunately. Before the first day of class I did not even
consider gender inequality or slavery as a still existing social issue.
Watching and reading transcripts from TedTalks showed me a difference in the world
we live right now. Sheryl WuDunn and Kevin Bales discussed various issues,
which are no enough highlighted in our daily life’s. Personally I prefer Kevin
Bales talk because he brought up a topic that completely stroked me in a sense
that I did not know the real mean of slavery before, I did not think that
slavery takes place in 21st century. In 18 munetes Bales explained
slavery in the best possible way because he provided appropriate examples,
which created a good picture about the slavery in the modern world. He opened
an insight into a new different world for me.
WuDunn claims that in the present century gender inequality
became a challenge for many places of the world. For evidence she provides some
terrifying examples where girls are treated poorly while their male peers are
treated totally fine. She refers to many families with low incomes and to those
who live in rural areas because those places have outrageous examples. I
want to focus on the Saima's story. This story at some point contradicts with
the UDHR article 6 which says that “
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. She
is a girl from Pakistan, who was beaten by her unemployed husband every day,
she gave him only 2 daughters and never gave him a son. “Her mother-in-law told
her son , “I think you’d better get a second wife. Saima’s not going to produce
you a son.” This is a clear reference back to an inequality. The question came
up to my mind was what is wrong with producing a girl? Does make her a bad
wife? It was said by a woman, who was born as a girl, why would she not want
another girl to be born. This sounds so controversial for me. Saima appeared to
be such a dedicated woman who opened up an embroidery business and involved her
husband in it as well. She is such a good example for me since she did not
leave her husband, she did not try to fight him back, she just found a solution
for her particular case and proved her mother-in-law thoughts wrong, because
she is a good wife who cares about her husband and kids although they are girl.
Kevin Bales
on the other hand talk about the way more serious issue which is slavery. By
slavery he literally means “ people who can not walk away, people who are
forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of
violence and have no pay”. This might sound bizarre to many of us, we may not
believe that it it actually happening in our world, but we currently have 27
million slaves in the world. He emphasize on the definition of a real slavery
because some may think that slavery is an unfortunate marriages or low paid
work demanded jobs. When we have a look at the UDHR article 4 which states that
“No one should be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade
shall be prohibited in all their forms” we see that in real world this is not a
law because human trafficking exist and more than that it is a very well
developing business. People suffer from hunger, people are seeking for any
opportunity to earn a coin to buy a piece of bread to feed their kids and
relatives, instead they are finding themselves enslaved by those cruel
slaveholders who hold them for small amount of food and no money. When I read
the UDHR i thought of such countries as Nigeria for example. I remember that my
Nigerian friends would always complain about corrupted
government. I saw a close connection between slavery and business, because
government instead of fighting this issues makes money on it. Bales conform by
saying that corruption destroys the rule of the law, that the law does not
protect people because money would have final say. Reading, listening, watching
this Ted talk made me think only about how do slaveholders live their live with
such a guilt on them, how do they even sleep at nights knowing that they ruined
so many lives, that they are dragging the world back to ancient times by
enslaving others.
Both talks gave me such a huge platform for discussion, I kept talking about this social
issues to the people around me because I was just amazed and shocked at the
same time. We have all the recourses to end slavery, just so many people close
their eyes on that issue. We need to shout out about those problems to the
world, we need to let the world know that our peers are in danger. They are
about to never feel what it is like to have friends, to read books and browse
the web. We know that education is the best investment , but we never heart
that in some places girls would not even have a chance to go to the school and
sit behind the desk just because she is a girl. We are so focused on our own
lifes that we forget to take care of those who actually need our aid. I recall
such events September 11 , 2001 when we did not care about terrorism and we got
such a dramatic event happening. All world was devastated, but the consequence
was that every single country enhanced their security level, every country
started paying attention to terror attacks because it did affect the
population. So why wont we take an action now to solve this social issues in
advance when they did not become mind blowing issues? Why don’t each of us
consider about small input in order to change our society and world for the
best?
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