Of all the details about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the one that stays with me is the death of a woman during the assault.
At first, the media reported she died as a “human shield,” held in a final act of cowardice by bin Laden himself or one of his accomplices. Then the media said she had been “caught in the crossfire.”
Finally, it was revealed that she was shot while unarmed in her quarters and was the wife of the Al-Qaeda courier who literally led American troops to bin Laden’s doorstep.
Who was she? Was she in that compound by choice, or was she dutifully obeying the commands of her husband? Was she brainwashed into bin Laden’s lethal cult of personality? Did she ever get to leave?
We will probably never know, and she’ll remain just another anonymous female casualty of history.
If our world is ever going to overcome its continual cycles of war, poverty and injustice, it’s imperative that more women use their individual and collective voices to demand change and avoid the fate of the courier’s wife.
Women on the march
One surprising place where women appear to be finding their voice is in the Middle East. The Arab Spring that has brought dramatic change to the region has been initiated with the help of countless women.
Another recent image that sticks with me is a photo in a February issue of Time magazine showing a young Egyptian woman working on a laptop beneath the iconic Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It!” poster from World War II. It’s an apt comparison: The woman’s right arm is bare like Rosie’s, her head scarf is red like Rosie’s bandana and both are doing what they can to save the world and liberate themselves in the process.
I’ve read that the turning point in the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was when female protestors started showing up in large numbers in Cairo’s Tahir Square. Unfortunately, I’ve also read that as soon as he was removed, men approached the groups of women and told them to go back home, that their work was done and they would no longer be needed.
It is this attitude that is still the norm around the world for hundreds of millions of women, oppressed by their governments, culture and religions. Or worse: We’ve all seen terrible news stories of teenage Asian and Eastern European women sold into sex slavery, or women stoned to death for adultery in Saudi Arabia, or hundreds of women murdered in the Mexican city of Juarez.
Just this week, The Seattle Times reported that 1,152 women are raped every day in Congo, a central African nation of 70 million people that is the size of Western Europe and whose warring militias systematically use rape to destroy entire communities.
Will human civilization ever be able to overcome these horrendous crimes? Not without gender equality.
Leadership gap
While the freedom found in the United States is an example for women around the world, women still have a lot of work to do here to achieve true equality.
For example, while the gender population split in America has remained about 50/50 over the decades, women are woefully underrepresented in our democracy. Obviously, we’ve never had a female president or vice president. Women currently hold only 17 out of 100 seats in the Senate and 75 seats out of 435 seats in the House. Three of the nine Supreme Court justices are women.
On the state level, just six out of the 50 states have female governors. While these numbers are the among the highest in our nation’s history, right now, the United States has less legislative participation by women than Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the private sector, 15 Fortune 500 companies were run by women in 2010 — 28 when expanded to Fortune 1,000 companies.
Last September, USA Today reported that the earnings gap between men and women shrank to a record low in the United States, with women earning 82.8 percent of the median weekly wage of men, the highest percentage ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, this high percentage is tempered by the fact that men lost jobs at a faster rate than women during the Great Recession, and more men continue to move into lower-paying jobs traditionally held by women.
Women ages 35 to 44 still earned about $200 less each week than the average man.
In the arms of hope
Will the rise of women’s equality around the world decrease our worldwide problems? Will there be less war if there are more female presidents and prime ministers? Will there be less starvation, poverty and prisons if more women are involved with making laws and economic decisions? I believe yes.
Looking around, the worldwide patriarchy isn’t doing too well. Women — and men — need to do more to achieve equality. But some of the sacrifices that will need to be made to reach this goal around the world will be almost unbearable. Osama bin Laden still has many followers.
I learned he was killed that Sunday night while I was watching “60 Minutes.” The newsmagazine had just finished broadcasting an interview with Lara Logan, CBS News’ chief foreign correspondent, who spoke about her widely reported sexual assault for the first time.
She had been surrounded and attacked by a group of men in Tahir Square, the supposed “good guys,” the night it was announced Mubarak was stepping down and the protestors had won. Throughout the 25-minute assault, Logan was convinced she was going to die until a group of Egyptian women intervened. It was only when she found herself held tightly in the arms of another anonymous woman that she knew she was going to survive.
The world needs many more of these strong, female arms.
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