Once upon a time, in the midst of the black roses, a red one so vividly colored and severely alluring stands out but has difficulty blending in. She felt miserable and degraded and sometimes wished she was just a black one. Sometimes, she also wonders why can’t all the black roses just be red ones. One day, an elderly man named wisdom came passing by and the red rose took all the courage to ask wisdom why and to that, wisdom had no answer.
But I have one.
Perception has it that Eve, the first figure of women to ever walk the halls of our society was the root of all sin. Because she ate the apple, because she was easily tempted, because she talks to serpents, because she has long wavy hair that covers her porcelain-like skin where there was still no long dresses by Armani to cover her with, because basically of one reason that has always been an extreme point of argument - because she is a woman.
And… and what? Remember, God created everyone equally in his own image and likeness.
Modern jungle: Woman throughout the centuries
As men evolved from apes to upright-walking men who can use their body efficiently to survive, as nipa-huts turn into towering buildings and sky-high infrastructures, as shelves of book started depleting and were then replaced by computers and as the world spins madly on, women, as they live in their own private bubble also undergoes the phase of evolution, of development.
Women changed. As all things do. They started to learn how to stand on their own stiletto-wearing-feet, they learned how to go with the fast-paced life and they struggled to thrive in a manly-world.
According to Gloria Steinem, “This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned. We are really talking about humanism.”
Modern jungle 2: Women in the world of men
However, as women try to advance in this world, it is inevitable that pitfalls to their success would get in the way.
“Socially constructed roles too often thwart the potential of girls and women. Discrimination denies them health care and education. It hides information that they can use to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Discrimination robs girls and women of the the power to make decisions, to earn a living and to be free from violence, abuse and exploitation. Often it deprives them of any legal protection”, a statement from UNICEF tackling about the big picture of the reality of the head-on collision of men and women in this now-becoming one-sided world.
While it is difficult for women to survive in a manly world, you can only imagine how much more it is in the part of bisexuals, transgender and the like. It is far from our wildest imagination to think of all the difficulties these kind of people are experiencing. Truly, the world has changed. God only created Adam and Eve and then as years passed by, there sprung another kind.
It’s just a matter of perspective. You can look at them as the fruit of all the majestic things that the Mighty has done. Because just the same, they’re humans, with equal rights and equal feelings. They just differ on a completely nth number of degree because of their varied beliefs and principles in life. The LGBT, an initialism raised to stress the miscellany of "sexuality and gender identity-based cultures".
Of course, the LGBT gathered many unwanted fans. Some says that transgender and transsexuality is simply about gender identity and it’s just a matter of sexual orientation. There were personal, moral, spiritual and social objections to gay rights.
Moreover, it is not only these ‘queer’ and ‘rainbow-like’ people who are painstakingly taking the journey side-by-side with men. Women, of course has the most evident difficulty.
Here in the Philippines, in was in the 1987 that the government introduced a Constitution that affirms women’s equality with men. But there were still the incessant and consistent problems on the issue on gender equality where women were discriminated by the rights that they rightfully deserve and situations where education and employment opportunities differ between men and women.
Globally speaking, various movements and codes of ethics were written to legalize the rights of women. The conference on 'Women deepening democracy' held in New Delhi last week examined what can be done to tackle the gender-specific double standard encoded into the DNA of political liberalism. Women have been at the forefront of democratization struggles around the world, from the Southern Cone of Latin America in the 1980s to the Eastern European transitions of the 1990s, and from the Orange and Rose revolutions, to the establishment of democracy in post-conflict countries such as Timor Leste, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nepal. Once democracies are established, efforts are often made to increase the numbers of women participating in competitive politics and holding elective office. Doing so, it is hoped, will bring issues of women’s well-being onto public agendas, combat gender biases embedded in a range of public and private institutions, and improve social and economic outcomes for women.
Last week twenty two civil society groups from fourteen countries supported by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the new United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) shared their experience of trying to make democracy work for women at the ’Women Deepening Democracy: Transforming Politics for Gender Equality’ conference in New Delhi.
The global quest for gender equality goes on.
It all boils down to this.
Filipinos have been far behind the efficient promotion of gender equality. We were lost in the allure and sparkles coming off the beautiful clothes women wrapped themselves in when behind the layers of silk and rich tapestries lies the many wounds and blisters the society ahs inflicted upon them.
Regardless of how many bites Eve took from the apple, despite of the many flaws and imperfections of women and in the face of all the disgrace and impurities the society perceive women has, a woman is still a woman, a creature of God, a blessing from above.
But here me when I say, we still have all the time in this world and there’s still a lot of spaces for improvement and rooms for development.
Pamela Anderson echoes my answer by this saying of hers, “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”
And one last thing, we measure the significance of one’s lives not by how many apples they bit, punches they’ve thrown, years they lived, sunsets they’ve seen or midnights that passed, but by the number of moments that they made that will truly live forever.
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