Last month, March, was full of women focused events. In this issue of YouthSpeak, we want to set a focus on women rights. We are not only talking about the International Women Day, but also the Equal Pay Day (20th March), exhibitions and honours of and for women.
For instance, since 2005 there has been an exhibition/project called Peace Women Worldwide, which is based on the 1000 women campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. The goal was to realize a visibility for women work in the area of peace, their networks and methods, their work for peace and an equal future. These women stand for equality, solidarity and human rights. They fight against poverty, transform conflicts, create alternative income possibilities, educate, support, reintegrate people, search for solutions in violence cases etc. To counter the continued domination of men in the Nobel Peace Prize, they advocated for the nomination of 1000 women from 150 countries for the peace noble prize in 2005. Their work can be found in the book
1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe. Although none of the nominated women got the prize, it is still an honour and motivation, and indeed a great ‘Call to Action’, to have initiated such a worthy move.
Inspired by that exhibition, young people in my region here in Germany started to look into their own surrounding for women who are doing wonderful work in their life, and at their spare time. So, they started their own exhibition called 100 peace women for the Havelland district. I want to congratulate them for that beautiful idea. Not only were these women honoured, also the youngsters learnt a lot from the experiences of these women which am sure will be invaluable to them in their work, now and in the future.
Let us inspire more people; let us try to make the world, in whatever little way we can, to be fair and a better place to live.