girls from one to five years of age are 50 percent more likely to die from preventable causes than boys their age. Women die unnecessarily in childbirth due to inadequate medical care, or due to lack of contraception and choice. Pregnancy carries greater risks when the mother is very young or weakened by multiple pregnancies and poor nutrition. Then there are deaths of women from the collateral damage of armed conflict, especially when rape is used as a weapon, which is the case in many parts of Africa. And rape becomes an even more common and horrifying gender hazard when accompanied by mutilation and severe beatings, as it is in families and communities where the victim is blamed and may be turned out to live on the streets.
Experts have revised upward the estimate of missing girls from 100 million to 160 million. Jeni Klugman, Director of Gender and Development for the World Bank, called this “femicide” in a talk at the United Nations that drew from the World Development Report for 2012. According to this report, four million women go missing annually. These are obviously conclusions drawn from inadequate information, in the realm of what laymen call “guesstimates,” or “educated guesses.” But questioning numbers like these or doubting their accuracy sometimes allows us to ignore their human impact. When we turn people into inanimate statistics, we numb our emotional reaction to them. When we try to wrap our minds around such appalling numbers, we lose sight of their real meaning. One remedy is to think in smaller numbers. What if it were only a “mere” million, or only 100,000, or just 10,000? What if it were your daughter or yourself or your very young grandchild? It is important to be able to imagine being helpless, to imagine the horror of being abducted, beaten, and raped, or of being sold or turned by fear and pain into prostitution, as occurs in human trafficking.
When I go to panels and presentations that are given by UN NGOs (nongovernmental organizations recognized by the United Nations) or by the UN Commission on the Status of Women, they usually focus on women and girls during the meetings. At these events, women from every continent come together to address women's issues. Many of these organizations were founded by women who themselves had been victimized, but did not take on the role of victim. For others, this work feels like a vocation—a calling to help women who suffer in a number of ways, among them human trafficking, AIDS, or female genital mutilation (FMG). This barbaric, religiously sanctioned practice of cutting off a girl's clitoris and labia and sometimes sewing what remains together (except for space for menstrual blood to flow out) is intended as a way to prove the virginity of the girl or woman when taken in marriage, perhaps as one of many wives. This mutilation, of course, also assures that first penetration must tear through scar tissue, that intercourse can never be pleasurable, and that childbirth will be painful. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and feminist (or, her preference, “womanist”) Alice Walker has galvanized public opinion against FMG through her writing and film collaboration with Pratibha Parmar on Warrior Marks (1993). When Walker was interviewed, she confronted her critics with this ringing statement: “Torture is not culture!” repudiating the right to do this to little girls in the name of religion and culture.
Supportive, Protective, Egalitarian Men
In one version of Atalanta's myth, hunters who think they are rescuing her kill the mother bear. In another version (preferred by readers who feel a connection with bears and Atalanta), the hunters come upon Atalanta when she is alone in the bear's cave and take her back to their camp. In both versions, Atalanta is, for a time, raised by men, from whom she learns language and proficiency with bow and arrows and spear. She no doubt gets approval and encouragement from these men, taking to everything they teach. Atalanta would have felt special, cared for, and supported during this phase of her life, as do girls in the mold of Artemis who have fathers who are delighted with their spunk and abilities.
It is easy to think of Atalanta as a high-spirited, confident girl who, small as she is, stands toe to toe with these hunters, insisting on what she thinks is true and protesting when something is not fair. Men like these take pride in such daughters. They are “Daddy's best buddy” or “Daddy's little girl.” This kind of relationship often comes to an end as puberty approaches and it's time to establish physical and emotional distance from the budding woman the daughter is becoming. This transition may go smoothly or may be tempestuous and fraught with emotional outbursts. A best-buddy phase with a father who is admired and a good role model supports give-and-take, encourages assertiveness, and recognizes developing skills. These young women tend to become like their fathers or father figures in certain ways that give them a sense of pride, because their fathers are proud of them.
In The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), Katniss Everdeen is sixteen when the trilogy begins. The happiest time in the week for her is when she goes with her father into the woods, lakes, and meadows outside the District-12 fence, beyond which citizens are forbidden to go. There, he teaches her to hunt with a bow and arrow, to bring down food for the family, and to hunt game to trade. Katniss has both instinct and skill; her arrows fly where she sends them. After her father's death, Katniss becomes the sole provider for her mother and sister. Her mother withdraws into her grief and stops functioning, and it is up to Katniss to look after the family.
Both Atalanta and Katniss excel as hunters, taught by their fathers or father figures to be competent and survive on their own. Katniss clearly identifies with her father and takes over as provider and protector as much as she can at his death. Her mother is clearly not a role model. In fact, both Atalanta's and Katniss' mothers are ineffectual. And, although Atalanta's father rejects her and orders her exposed on a mountaintop to die, in psychological terms, both are “fathers' daughters.” They are women who are decisive, can act swiftly, choose targets or goals of their own, and have the focus and skill to hit what they aim for. Their worlds are outside the household that is the realm of “mothers' daughters.”
In the United States toward the end of the 1960s and 1970s, consciousness-raising groups became the foundation of the Women's Movement. Here, women learned about sexism and inequality. They became determined that this had to change, and they encouraged each other to make a difference. Women shared information, wrote, marched, testified, had demonstrations, and entered formerly all-male enclaves and professions. Ms. magazine began publication. Couples worked to create egalitarian relationships and families. As a result, girls with Artemis qualities circa 1970 and after were likely to have parental approval to be active and confident. Spirited three-year-old girls with minds of their own could express what they wanted and felt, and still bask in the approval of their fathers and mothers. No more Little Miss Muffetts sitting on tuffets eating her curds and whey. Now, far from being frightened away by the spider, these emanicipated girls could be free to investigate and explore all the critters and creatures in the outdoors with interest. Indeed, little Ms. Muffett was “free to be you and me,” and sang the songs to prove it!
Send Word, Bear Mother
Helen Stoltzfus, author of and principal performer in the award-winning documentary film Send Word, Bear Mother (www.theoi.com), based her work on her own true story, a saga that began with her illness and infertility. She had seen many specialists without success over many years. With symptoms of fatigue and infertility, and no satisfactory explanations for either, Helen joined a support group for people with life-threatening and chronic illnesses. In an exercise in which she was supposed to tap into inner sources of healing and imagination, a skeptical Helen unexpectedly began having a series of profound encounters with a mother grizzly bear spirit who appeared to her in dreams and came to her unbidden in fantasy. She experienced these as powerful visitations from the spirit world. They empowered her to try one more specialist in her effort to get pregnant.
This doctor diagnosed Helen as having endometriosis—a condition in which cells that are part of the lining of the uterus that are normally shed during menstruation can grow anywhere in the peritoneum (the space that holds all our internal organs below the diaphragm)—and recommended surgery. Helen had the surgery, but there seemed to be no satisfactory explanation for her condition. So she began to search for possible
