Middle East Connections Consultancy

CNN's Girl Rising – A Response

Without doubt, education, freedom to choose a lifestyle, and merely freedom to choose life can no longer be denied women and girls in the 21^st century. CNN’s Girl Rising, which premiered Sunday evening in the U.S., addressed many of these issues faced every day by women and girls throughout the world. In developing nations, girls still suffer the indignities of human trafficking, sold by families into sex slavery, and in some places infant girls put to death as one too many mouths to feed. Poor families need male children to carry on the family name and traditions with the underlying theme that girl children must no longer suffer shame, illiteracy, or abandonment.
Girl Rising stepped up to bring these problems to national and international attention. Voices of the rich and famous lent their star power to this effort, writers from native countries contributed personal stories to the CNN presentation directed by Richard Robbins. But, unfortunately, the strength of the programme seemed to lack the necessary “oomph” for the seriousness of the problem involved. The Cinderella, fairytale quality was never far from the surface of each of these tales.
For example, the Nepalese story demonstrated the tragedy of selling a child to a master because the family could not afford to keep her. But throughout the account, the girl was able to write songs for survival, she dreamt of returning home to family, a family she knew cared for her but in desperation followed the family tradition of selling a member out to masters. Eventually, although suffering hardships, working pre-dawn to dark, and eating scraps, her third master allowed her to be educated in night school. This is wonderful, but does it really address the situation of the untold Nepalese girls unable to be sent to school or return to a family never to be sold again?

In Sierra Leone, the young heroine, not without difficulties, maneuvered her way to a talk radio program, giving advice to girls and women on a variety of concerns facing Sierra Leone women. How is this done in the normal course of life in sub-Saharan Africa? As a former resident in the Middle East, meeting many women and girls from countries like Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the Republic of Congo, I know that one must have “wasta” (influence) in order to even approach the idea of speaking on radio or television. This girl not only had a family, but there had to be a great deal of influence for her to become a radio host. Not only education, but influence is necessary.
The authors of Half the Sky delved deeply into the problems confronting the women of sub-Saharan Africa. True, many of their stories had satisfactory endings, but not without years of overcoming prejudice and struggles which those of us in the developed world can barely imagine. The crises of FGM, hymen reconstruction in Middle Eastern countries, and the continued sex-trafficking, alongside the magnitude of education for women and girls must also receive continued global attention. Girl Rising circumvented and sugar-coated many of the realities of girls with no hope of ever receiving an education and living in the darkness of ignorance and illiteracy. No village chieftain will sit in front of television watching a western programme advising him that he must allow girls and women education. Neither will members of the Taliban, those who shot and nearly killed young Mulala Youseffsai, subscribe to the importance of educating girls and women. Those who watched, those who spoke, those who gave time and money know education for girls is vital. How do we reach those who don’t watch, won’t listen, and won’t accept the importance of girls and women in society as other than baby-making machines?

The Egyptian story written by Mona El Tahawy emphasizes this point. I have personally worked with the street girls, the homeless, helpless, and certainly illiterate girls in Egypt. If the basic premise behind Girl Rising is to expose the dearth of education in developing countries, then the Egyptian tale erased many of these benefits. Yasmin, the young Egyptian girl, revealed that she was literate, had a family, and came from a neighborhood that boasted at least one or possibly more televisions. Why? She was familiar with superheroes; the bookshops which sit on virtually every Cairo street corner sell Marvel comics in Arabic showing the superhero. Egyptian television is filled with cartoons, in Arabic, about superheroes. No young Egyptian girl, certainly not one wearing an hijab, would speak to a policeman without fear, about being a superhero, even with her mother beside her.
Yasmin’s family life is questionable. Her mother brought her in to a police station to report a rape. Would this happen in reality? Admitting to the police that her husband was in jail, trusting the police with an accusation of rape against a fairly prosperous man, and then Yasmin telling the police she was not afraid of anything, she was a superhero, just would not happen in Cairo…even if Yasmin’s family was wealthy. Rape is not a crime which is brought to police attention. The recent demonstrations and ill treatment by the police and military of female protesters show the reality of announcing rape to the Egyptian world. It’s such a disquieting circumstance that the one young woman raped by police during the demonstration, though bravely bringing this to national attention by suing the police in court, knew she might be outcast by her own people for doing this. That she was not outcast was due in part because of the international attention she received, the prominence of her family, and the impending political elections.

              Yasmin’s education and ability to be educated was not brought in to question. State schools are available to all children who have families, family names, even if the father is in prison. That Yasmin’s mother brought her to the police station is unrealistic; also, the information that the writer of the Egyptian story now claims to have lost track of both mother and daughter is not quite believable. Cairo, though a city of 20 million, is made up of neighborhoods, and everyone always knows someone. It’s not a city in which it’s easy to hide.
              Finally, Yasmin’s violent reaction against being called a street girl brings the hideous matter of a devastating problem facing Cairenes. Street children, in particular street girls, abandoned, raped, imprisoned, beaten, raped, and illiterate live desperate existences with no hope or end in sight. These girls and the thousands like them have deeply moving stories to tell.
  These girls, or in Arabic, Il Binait Dol, are the ones we need to hear about. They, too, would like to be considered as real humans, members of a planet not too proud to recognize and correct the shame being perpetrated on them every day. They, too, deserve a place among Girl Rising.