Wendi’s Wanders

We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions. Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í writings

Today was a day of impassioned voices at the Soroptimist International Convention in Glasgow. Amazingly powerful speakers Rawwid Baksh, Eve Richings and Zainab Salbi (who spoke about the now-completed joint project between Soroptimists and Women for Women International - Project Independence, Women Survivors of War - exposed the reality of the lives of women who live in poverty, the poverty that comes from decisions made by others remote from the women themselves.

These `others’ usually have agendas that are more concerned with making money or conquering a piece of land or taking what is under the land or having power or imposing some extreme religious or political ideology than with the welfare of female human beings. Whatever the agenda, it is women who wind up partnerless or homeless or raped or penniless or uneducated or beaten or imprisoned or dead - or all of the above. (I am particularly infuriated by religious and political fanatics who think it is OK to overturn every moral, religious, ethical, humane, compassionate, commonsense principle and hurt people so that their particular belief can prevail, as if their religion or political view sustained that position.)

Eve Richings

Eve Richings spoke eloquently and with deep emotion of the women and girls she had met on her many travels in Afghanistan and elsewhere, showing us what they endured and survived and revealing their courage and fortitude and determination to create a better life. Her eyes and ours filled with tears as she recalled the horrid injustices so many women she had met had experienced.

Zainab Salbi

Zainab Salbi, an Iraqi, herself brought up in war, talked movingly about the lived experience of war for women - not the battles and tanks and guns but the impossibility of feeding one’s children or having a bath or feeling safe in one’s home.

Rawwida Baksh

But it was hearing Rawwida Baksh’s analysis of how things could change that convinced me that it is not just awareness of these issues that will effect change, not just assistance to individuals, important as these are. She said that for real change to take place, systems and structures and institutions must change, as well the hearts and minds of individuals. The communities in which individuals operate must change. We need to do the short term things - provide disaster relief, provide food and shelter and emergency healthcare .But we also need to do the long term things - stop war, make it possible for children and mothers to receive education and - most importantly for me - overhaul outmoded ideas of who women are and what they can do.

I spent the afternoon at the Climate Change workshop - probably the best workshop I have ever attended - and a marvellous evening with the Soroptimists of Paisley. But more of that tomorrow.

My own reflections? No single action will fix everything. The issues are complex. But working together on many fronts, will enable humanity to travel its long road more sustainably. As the theme of the Convention says (a theme my Bahá’í friends will recognize!), `Unity of Purpose, Diversity in Action’.

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