Mother Earth

I attended an update on the millennium development goals at the UN today and learned that 80 per cent of sub Saharan Africa's small farmers are women. They walk an average of 4 miles a day to get their water, and they produce 90 per cent of the continent's food (elsewhere I've seen reports at 75- 80 per cent. Regardless: a preponderance). But for a variety of reasons, including the fact that (and this may be garbled; at the very least an overgeneralization; but I couldn't stay long enough to clarify during the q&a) they are not considered farmers socially (qua gender, as I understood it), they have the least access to technical and other information to help them improve their methods and lives. Only 17 per cent of the arable land in the region is under cultivation. Almost half of the population of the region lives on less than $1 per day.

(None of this is really surprising, of course. But I am reminded of how much is really at stake in an internationalist feminism: something I've always believed in and at times fought for--but if you live in a wealthy nation and don't commonly find yourself in the academic or activist situations that would tend to remind you--well, it does tend to become an abstraction. Even modest activities such as today's are salutary under such circumstances).

These statistics were offered as part of a presentation on progress toward millennium development goal #1: 'Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger'. The chart that accompanies this update in The Millennium Development Goals Report shows that since 1999, progress (even if slight) has been made toward this goal in every region except for Western Asia, where poverty rates have more than doubled since 1990. The narrative report doesn't comment on this. I can think of a few possible reasons. Check this out, too.

Take 62

I live and work in the neighborhood, so for the past week have navigated barricades, stalled traffic, clusters of ill-assorted men in ill-fitting suits, and all the other annual inconveniences of the General Assembly. The protesters with bullhorns have been less in evidence and I'm trying to recall whether I've got my seasons confused and they really only appear in the spring and summer (I know they do show up then but I thought now too). At any rate, there is one group that has set up along the Second Avenue side of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza for the past week, protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency and his appearance before the UN. They have set up a barricade of lurid photographs depicting the executions over which he and his government have presided.

I am conditioned by the anti-abortion lobby and their crude intimidation tactics to disregard gruesome close-ups of aborted fetuses and other visual, visceral efforts to supplant reason and law with emotion and religion.

One photograph disturbs me terribly though. It's a woman in a white chador, facing the camera with an expression of extreme anguish. She is at a 30 degree angle, buried above her elbows, surrounded by men with shovels who are intent on completing the job.

It's incredibly ugly. But however righteous, indignation and outrage should not supplant discussion and debate.