According to reports in World Pulse magazine, investing in schooling for girls in developing countries creates exponential growth for those girls and their communities. The educated woman invests 90% of her income in her family (compared to 35% for men). With seven years of schooling, she'll likely birth 2.2 fewer children and marry four years later in life. For each extra year of primary school, her earnings can rise 20 percent.
I like facts and data because they help me think clearly, beyond the cultural messages that I ingest unwittingly, and sometimes find myself regurgitating almost unconsciously. Facts and data, rather than opinion, are the two cornerstones of problem solving, and yet they are consistently withheld from the people by American media. We must have facts and data in order to recognize where there is a problem!
Women, generally, are the ones who know how to solve problems and how to do it for cheap, sometimes using only a paper clip, or a safety pin. Yet, women have never really been asked how any kind of political situation that ultimately affects them, their families, and their communities could be fixed in order to better build and serve those communities in which they live. This, in my view, is the actual problem: women -- the poor and the uneducated workers, the permanent worldwide slave class, have yet to be considered, much less included at those tables where bankers and speculators and ambassadors and crowned heads divvy up the dough, and the resources.
I propose that the ones who are raped by soldiers from every warring nation, and whose children are terrorized, savaged, and murdered, must be heard and represented in those halls of power. I want to shout to those who can implement real change, now, that the world's permanent slave class of working mothers should be given a voice that will be heard, loud and clear, in every nation where they are presently silenced. I propose that every government, every sovereign nation and institution, immediately fling open their doors and become and remain accessible to women so that we can begin to solve actual problems on this planet, instead of enabling and enriching a certain class of us to simply go around making speeches about the
problem. I am a woman, therefore I am a problem solver.
Anyway, here are some pointed questions we must ask about pressing problems facing the women of the world today, accompanied by some strategies and suggestions for solutions, free of charge, from me, the world's Premiere Grandmother.
1 How do we immediately disarm and discard the war-for-profit machine?
2. How can we get the food to the hungry?
3. How can we make sure the food we grow is actually food?
Women of this planet need some essential resources: wells, seeds and roads. That is primarily all we have ever needed. Added to that, women need righteous and strong men who will help us to use our most cherished gifts: the ability to multitask and problem solve. Men can fill that role, for example, by moving the heavier items and unscrewing lids on jars, and doing other useful tasks with which they are so very good at performing for us. Seriously, we need men who will serve and help maintain and protect those communities that we create. We need strong men who can serve the will of the grandmothers who know how to solve all old problems, which are really at the heart of the new ones, as well. We need to make more men
understand that Nature is not "their bitch"; she is our Mother!
How do we break out of lemming programming that has been foisted on us by obsolete thinkers? How can we remove those who are profiting from the misery of others? Answer: We simply start a nonviolent revolution in which informed, impassioned women are seen in the streets by other women in faraway places. It has begun and is now unstoppable. Women in open protest have become visible to other women, despite centuries of censure and violence against that most essential revolutionary occurrence.
My heart is lifted and I'm inspired when I see the grandmothers out in the streets in Tunisia, in Haiti, in Egypt, often standing behind their husbands or sons or grandchildren smiling up at the cell phones or directly into the video cameras. Yes, we see you, grandmother! We are so proud of out-of-control women who do not bow down to the endless state of patriarchal wars for God, glory or profit. There is more to unite us than there is to divide us. Yes, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives and the good men who respect and support your efforts toward solutions and progress -- we see you! We know you want democracy, and the peace and stability that come from political, economic, and social justice. We know you want freedom, and choices, and to be paid a living wage. Women fed up with oppression and fired up by righteous causes are now visible to other women, in every corner of the globe, and that is just the beginning. Women of the world, rise and unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains! Thank you, sisters!