The Struggle Women Face
TED talk fellow Laura Boushnak advocates for women’s literacy and also known for a Kuwait photographer who traveled to many countries around the world to talk to women about their education in the Arab areas. Yemen, Egypt, and Tunisia where she met and had a discussion with young activist females that struggled with their education and literacy such as the lack of basic reading and writing skills that was documented for For These Women Reading is a Daring Act. Laura herself originally was not allowed to pursue her education to the next level which was the reason for her starting the project “I Read I Write“, fighting for political, social, and personal rights for women, also known as feminism.
Female illiteracy was genuinely high in their region along with programs for dropout students only for women. One of the females Boushnak interviewed stated “I sought education to be independent and to not count on men with everything”. There are so many women today who believe having a man by their side is the only way they can survive in society, men believing that they are more dominant than women. A female should want to be independent on their own and not just from getting an education and counting on anyone else but themselves as an individual. Men abusing their power and strength by being controlling in a relationship “her husband threaten to pull her out of classes because he found out his now literate wife was going through his text messages”. At the age of eight, one of the activists was forced out of school because of her marriage. As a man, a male should want their wife to be successful. Men and women should and all deserve equal rights. “Be who you want to be not who they want you to be, don’t accept their enslavement for your mother birthed you free”. Men treating females as the weaker sex by demanding them to do things that they are not willing to do when they were born without them.
To conclude, the states in Arab has faced many obstacles with education showing that it is practicable for women to change their lives through education and being independent dealing with economic and social characteristics by succeeding in life. Giving other women motivation to not follow after them but by showing good examples and being role models reaching to fighting the statistics about women in Arab states. Everyone around the world should have the rights to be free and educated. Equality is a requirement and so is education.
Article by Siani Davis