October 10, 2011

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air…   “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

Strong women,.. who are they? Are they the economically well off, the politically powerful, the beautifull,.. I would like to say that the really strong women are those who struggle with everyday lives, who still have a smile for others despite their problems. Think of the simple wife who manages her home however meagre the pay packet her husband brings. Think of those women who are married to a life of eternal drudgery, have no freedom, are born in societies where women are not even considered human. Take a look at live examples in society of these women who have brought about changes in their lives and others, have attempted to make a difference, or have been brave to fight for others. The women I have drawn are just a small segment of those who have endeavoured!

At first glance there is nothing remarkable about Parkaso Tomar, a hardy 70-something woman who has spent most of her life working in the fields and tending to cattle in a small north Indian village, until she picks up a gun and fires a volley of shots, all bang on target. She is the "shooter granny" of Johri village in Uttar Pradesh, a northern province infamous for honour killings and female foeticide. This is where Parkaso Tomar has become an unlikely role model, inspiring a new generation of female shooters ever since she picked up a gun for the first time. And that was well after she had turned 60. Since then she has silenced her opponents, both on the shooting range and in the local community, with unwavering commitment and zeal. On the way, she inspired her daughter Seema to become the first Indian woman to win a medal at the Rifle and Pistol World Cup. It was destiny's calling that took Parkaso and her much older sister-in-law to the shooting range in Johri, a pretty basic facility in the middle of a sprawling courtyard where poor village children practise for hours in the searing heat.

"I got my granddaughter admitted here, but she said she was afraid of coming alone so I started accompanying her. Then one day I picked up a gun and fired a shot, and it was quite good. So the coach said I should start practising and that I had the potential to be good." Even at the age of 75, Parkaso shoots with a steady hand and a piercing gaze. The grannies may be shooting away to glory but local traditions and customs still have to be followed - covering your head with a scarf all the time is one of them. Success for the ladies of the house started a mini-revolution in the village. "Even the men in our family were poking fun at us initially, but when they read about our achievements in the papers and when we started bringing home medals, they said: 'Practise as much as you want, and do it openly.' And others who used to make fun of us would say to their wives: 'You cook at home and work in the fields, but look at them, they are famous!'"

Russian journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in an elevator in her Moscow apartment building on Saturday 7th October, 2006. She won international recognition for her passionate reporting work on the conflict in Chechnya in which she sought to expose human rights abuses. Detained on occasion by the Russian military, the Novaya Gazeta special correspondent was famous for her book The Dirty War, a collection of articles mainly about the second Chechen conflict which began in 1999. In 2004, she was a joint winner of the Olaf Palme Prize for human rights work. Her polemical style earned her many critics in Russia but her stories stood out from much of the mainstream Russian media and she pursued them at great personal risk, whether reporting from the war zone or receiving death threats in Moscow. In October 2002, she was one of the few people to enter the Moscow theatre, where Chechen militants had seized hundreds of hostages, in a bid to negotiate. In 2004, she tried to go to Beslan during the school siege but fell ill with food poisoning on the flight there. Some suspected a plot to incapacitate her. The same year her book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy depicted Russia as a country where human rights are routinely trampled upon.




In 1999, an appeal court in New York  ruled in favour of a Ghanaian woman fighting deportation on the grounds that she feared female circumcision if she returned home. The court said the fears of the woman, Adelaide Abankwah, aged 29, were grounded in reality, and she should be granted asylum in the United States. Miss Abankwah, who was chosen through heredity as the queen mother of her tribe in Ghana, fled after being threatened with genital circumcision because she had sex with a boyfriend and refused to undergo an arranged marriage.

A Brazilian judge renowned for her work against organised crime was shot dead in Rio de Janeiro State on 13th August, 2011. Patricia Acioli was gunned down outside her home in the city of Niteroi by masked men travelling on two motorbikes. She was best known for convicting members of vigilante gangs and corrupt police officers. The judge's family said she had received several death threats, but had not had a police escort. Witnesses told AFP the gunmen intercepted the mother-of-three's car as she was arriving at home in Niteroi, just across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. They had fired at least 16 shots, killing the 47-year-old instantly, reports said.

A prominent Russian human rights activist, Natalia Estemirova, was found dead in the North Caucasus, in July 2009. Ms Estemirova had been investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya for the independent Memorial group, she had been gathering evidence of a campaign of house-burnings by government-backed militias. Ms Estemirova, who was 50 according to Russian prosecutors, had worked in the past with the activist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in 2006. Ms Estemirova was engaged in very important and dangerous work, investigating hundreds of cases of alleged kidnapping, torture and extra-judicial killings by Russian government troops or militias in Chechnya. She is the most recent in a long line of human rights activists and lawyers to have been killed or attacked in Russia.


Angela Conceicao Vaz began working as a domestic servant for a family in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 13 but she always knew she wanted something better. She attended evening classes to complete her basic education, followed by courses including computing and English. Now aged 35, Angela has been working as secretary for a telemarketing company for 14 years and owns her own home. Her eldest daughter, 17, is planning to go to university, and her 12-year-old daughter attends a private school, with Angela paying half the fees. "They are working for a better future. I am so proud," says Angela. She belongs to a generation of women who had little choice but domestic service.




Arek Anyiel Deng, when aged about 10, was seized from her home, not far from Malualbai, South Sudan. Arab militias rode in to her village on horseback, firing their guns. When the adults fled, the children and cattle were rounded up and made to walk north for five days before they were divided between members of the raiding party. Ms Anyiel returned home under a government scheme. "My abductor told me that I was his slave and I had to do all the work he told me to - fetching water and firewood, looking after animals and farming," she said. "When I was 12, he said he wanted to sleep with me. I could not refuse because I was a slave, I had to do everything he wanted, or he could have killed me." Such raids were a common feature of Sudan's 21-year north-south war, which ended in 2005. Sitting on the dusty ground outside the abandoned mud hut where she and her five children live, Ms Anyiel is delighted to have finally gained her freedom and to be able to make decisions about her own life. But freedom is not necessarily easy - she now has to support the children on her own, with no assistance from donors or the government. Her only income comes from collecting firewood in the bush to sell in the local market.

Seventeen years ago, a young Afghan girl gained international attention when her face appeared on the cover of the National Geographic magazine. An ethnic Pashtun whose parents were killed during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, she was living with the remaining members of her family in Pakistan's Nasir Bagh refugee camp when she was spotted by photographer Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula married shortly after the picture was taken, and has since given birth to four daughters, one of whom died as an infant. There are many more Sharbat Gulas in Afghanistan braving out their hard lives.


Usta remembers the night that drunken men broke into the mud shack where she lived away from her parents with several other schoolgirls in rural Tanzania. She had done her homework, but was having trouble sleeping. "There were seven of them. They forced their way into our huts, and rounded us up outside. "What they wanted was to rape us," she says. But this time she and her friends were lucky. "The men were drunk, so we managed to escape," she says. It does not always work out that way and Usta's story is becoming increasingly familiar in rural parts of Tanzania where more senior schools have sprung in the last decade. Many teenage girls who desperately want to finish their education live far from the safety of their villages and parents in huts that the locals call "ghettos". There they run the risk of attack so they do not have to walk up to 10km (six miles) twice a day to and from school. In Mbulu district, more than 150km (100 miles) west of Arusha, it is believed there are hundreds of girls living in this dangerous accommodation who are being harassed and - in more extreme cases - raped.

A CARE website reports that of the 1.3 Billion people living in absolute poverty all over the world, 70 per cent were women. For these women, poverty does not mean scarcity and want. It means rights denied, opportunities curtailed and voices silenced!

Grateful acknowledgement to bbcnews.com for news excerpts.