Women Ask: Why Don't You Do Something About It?

The Third Millennium Development Goal is:


PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN.

I think we should do this for a lot of different reasons. First, it's the right thing to do, particularly if you live in a democracy and you claim that all of us are created with equal rights and opportunities. Second, if you look at the historical record, it appears that women, when they have had the opportunity, have done a better job of governing than men. Surely women have been less prone to attempt resolving disputes by means of implementing the evils and wastes of warfare. Third, it has been said, and in my experience it has been true, that women are better at finding and implementing consensus, (an example of this is Eleanor Roosevelt, in the photo, the champion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)).



My oldest daughter Jane gave me a good example of creative consensus-building. In college she conceived a new line of water-resistant clothing styles as a way of raising people's consciousness about the impending threat of global warming. She reasoned that everybody needs clothing, and that trying on new clothes is the kind of personal experience that will make enough of an impression to stick. Let's hope she's right. Here is a link to her website:

http://www.climatechangepreparednesscenter.com/



While we are on the subject of links, Jane has pointed out to me that this blog needs a link that will help you understand more about the Millennium Development Goals that I keep talking about. So here it is:

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg2007.pdf

And of course, I wouldn't feel right unless I left you with a poem. So today's poem will be by a famous woman poet, and one of my favorites altogether:

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.


The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.


The brain is just the weight of God,

For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

--Emily Dickinson


Do you have a poem you can send me, too? Just email me at jabez.vancleef@verizon.net. Or, you can post your poem as a comment at the bottom of this page.