Social Justice Candle - March 9, 2014
Social Justice Candle by Patti Rieman
As we all know, March is Women’s History Month. While it is certainly inspiring to reflect on the achievements of our foremothers in bringing about key rights for women, we should also be inspired by remembering what still remains to be done.
Tomorrow, March 10th marks the opening day of the United Nations’ 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. This 12-day session is an opportunity for the Commission to bring global attention to the fact that the realization of women’s and girls’ human rights is far from being achieved and needs increased attention and action in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
So far, the progress report of the world-wide Millenium Development Goals is uneven at best. Certainly important gains have been made in such areas as providing girls with access to education; however, overall advancement for women and girls has fallen short of expectations—due to the lack of access to water, women and young girls still suffer from their roles as water collectors; 800 women per day die during child-birth; women are grossly under-represented in national parliaments; and here in the US a woman working full-time at minimum wage must rely on food stamps to feed her family. Yes, we may have come a long way, baby, but we have much further to go.
Our UU Principles remind us to seek the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. May we do so voice by voice, letter by letter, tweet by tweet, step by step. As Dorothy Day said, “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”
