This week I got an interesting invitation. A Sri Lankan high school teacher asked me to come to his school. He wants me to give a speech for their morning assembly about International Women’s Day… and quote “the difference between Sri Lankan and American women”.
“Sure no problem” I said... No problem?… summarizing a history of the global women’s movement --and complex cultural differences in 10 minutes… to 2 thousand Sri Lankan teenagers… No problem.
Much of my time here is spent marveling over the strength and experiences of Sri Lankan women. I’ve worked with local journalists to cover stories on a range of challenges Sri Lankan women face.
There are some 40 thousand war widows in Sri Lanka. Women whose husbands fought for the government side continue to receive their husbands’ salary. But when they go to collect their benefits they find some expect sexual favors in return for this ‘help’. Widows are seen by many as potential prostitutes. But if the women remarry to avoid the exploitation, they lose the paycheck.
We’ve talked to women who’ve had to travel to the Middle East to work as housemaids so that they could earn enough money to pay their dowries. Only they found when they came back that men thought they had been corrupted by working in the Middle East and so they couldn’t find husbands anyway.
One of the most galling stories we’ve done is about a wave of allegations by journalists and politicians that women working for NGOs were being corrupted. There were stories about pornography videos featuring NGO women made by foreign men. One politician alleged that over 200 NGO workers had gotten abortions… Apparently sexual exploitation is seen as a natural job hazard when working in close proximity with foreigners –with all their loose morals.
None of the accusations have been proven. But many young women have been pressured by their families to quit their NGO jobs. Some say they now are having a hard time finding husbands to marry them since they’re seen as tainted by their former careers.
Even progressive men I know are stuck in the logic that women can’t be both professionally successful and virtuous. Driving back from a story one of the journalists I work with said the war has made it worse for women. Before the war women could stay at home. But now since so many men have been killed, women have to work—and so women are exploited. So by that logic, is the answer to have women stay at home?
This week as part of the stories we are doing for International Women’s Day I went to the freshly opened Gender Studies Center at a local university.
The center is funded by a Canadian NGO and the brochure explaining their aims and objectives is awash with the lingo of North-American feminism... human rights, women’s empowerment, gender equality…
But when I asked about programs about violence against women—which were mentioned on the brochure-- I got a very long answer… Basically I was told, people here aren’t ready to talk about that. Reports say over 60% of Sri Lankan women live with domestic violence. But this is still very much a country in denial over the problem.
The Gender Studies Center director elaborated on the very sensitive line she must tread. The women who attend university come from relatively progressive families—otherwise they’d never allow their girls to get an education.
She doesn’t want to scare them off by talking about anything “too radical”.
“It’s important for us to respect our culture” she said.
I can’t argue with that. I’ve always had an internal debate between the philosophies of universal human rights and cultural relativism.
I’ve usually been wary of one size fits all approaches to human rights. But here I find myself being tested on a daily basis.
Like this week a journalist is doing a story on the role men play in defining beauty for women. Turns out there is an ancient poem that defines what makes a woman beautiful. Basically she is fearful, quiet and shy.
Ok, not surprising from an ‘ancient’ poem. But then he played me recordings of contemporary Sri Lankans –young and old, men and woman—who agreed. But of course, they said, a woman is beautiful when she maintains her “culture”.
I never thought I would come to hate the word “culture”.
But here one of the most common phrases I get is: ‘that wouldn’t be suitable’…usually followed by, “it’s our culture, dear”. Sometimes I want to scream ‘what does that word “culture” mean?!’ But when I have asked, nobody ever has much of an answer.
So… what will I tell the 2 thousand Sri Lankan teenagers on International Women’s Day?… I would argue that “culture” is being manipulated by a patriarcal society to preserve its power –But I’m guessing that will get lost in translation… or if not it might be seen as the radical lunacy of an agent of cultural imperialism. But then, many argue this younger generation has already been corrupted by globalization. So maybe they’ll be more sympathetic… or maybe they can even tell me what that word “culture” means… and why it seems women are the only ones responsible for preserving it.
