Women of the World

I think we need to examine how we treat women around the world. Women face serious challenges including: lack of education, sex trafficking, forced marriages, lack of access to reproductive health, etc. Lets look at the example of India.

In India young girls are often married as early as 5 or 6 years of age. There is an ancient system in India known as the Dowry. In the Dowry, a young girl's parents will offer the girl to a groom and his family. In addition, the girls parents will actually pay the groom along with the offering of the girl. If the payments are not large enough, the groom and his family will beat and even kill the girl. Another threat that these young Indian women face is complications of having births too young. Young girls' bodies are not developed enough to facilitate a healthy pregnancy. The pregnancy often kills young girls or causes serious health threats such as fistulas. Forced marriages of young girls are not unique to India either. This is a worldwide problem that needs to be solved.

I believe the two main causes of the Dowry are tradition and poverty. For example, families believe it is cheaper to marry off their girls rather than send them to school. In India school fees are expensive for people living in poverty. But, we as American can donate a mere few dollars to countries like India or countries in Africa and South East Asia. A mere ten or twenty dollars could save a child's life in India.

In my opinion the two causes of the forced marriages will be solved with these small donations. The money will allow the kids to become educated and bring their families out of poverty. In addition, the outdated cultural practice of the Dowry can only be solved through education. Education produces a more open minded and logical society. Besides the terrible human rights violations of the forced marriages, it makes no sense to continue these forced marriages in countries. Women hold societies up, it makes no sense to oppress women with forced marriages. We need to educate parents as well and explain that forced marriages and abuse of women threaten the entire society.

Americans listen up! That ten or twenty bucks we use to get beer on a Friday night or go bowling, or out to eat. That ten or twenty bucks could be donated to a kid in India and allow that kid to go to school rather than be married at the age of 5 and face a horrible life or even death.