The president of Zambia, Edgar Chagwa Lungu, took the opportunity to deliver a speech on Freedom Day, a national holiday celebrating the sacrifices of the freedom fighters who fought to gain the country’s independence from white rule. Though English is the dominant language in Zambia, my very American ears are not wired to decipher the accents and colloquialisms, so I miss a lot of the nuance. But as I listened to his longish speech, which he read in measured monotone from a prepared text (sans teleprompter), he paused regularly to look directly at the camera throughout to emphasize one word: Women. He devoted the entire speech to praising the progress of women’s rights under his administration and continuing plans for the future. Wise man…or perceptive man, wise speechwriters.
In my life, I have witnessed successive calls for reform to break the spell of many kinds of oppression and prejudice that we have visited upon ourselves. Each wave reminds us that we are living in a world that is skewed to favor the few, to isolate and disempower the "other." The natives, Blacks, hippies, disabled, gays, trans/ bisexuals. And now it seems, in Zambia, the spotlight has returned again to the oppression of women.
Each cycle of reform brings us the opportunity to self-examine, to see how we have been unaware or unconcerned. Unquestioned acceptance of the social norm is a blanket we use to cover the reality of our personal prejudice and bias. But the world is changing, evolving with or without our participation or consent. Our species has clearly arrived at a crossroad. Our nest is being reordered, and our politicians are giving voice to the obvious: we will not be going forward without the women.
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