On
October 22, 2014, I attended the presentation of guest speaker Dr.
Sakena Yacoobi in the Notre Dame de Namur chapel. Dr. Yacoobi's life
and commitments are based on the spread of education throughout South
Asia, especially in terms of creating opportunities for young women
to succeed in academics and in life in general. Her struggle comes
from understanding the clashing between traditional gender roles
prescribed by a culture that does not know anything else and the
development of the knowledge that women are people deserving of any
opportunities they make for themselves. Since her beginnings in
creating schools for young men and women to build skills, learn to
read and write, and gain general knowledge that will help them to
navigate the world around them, tens of thousands of young people
have been taking the chance to educate themselves.
The
most captivating story that Dr. Yacoobi told was that of the young
men who originally seemed to mean to do her harm. At one point when
she was traveling between villages, a band of young men with guns and
long, unkempt beards stopped her van. Dr. Yacoobi refused to let
anyone speak to them but her. When she asked them what they wanted,
they said that they'd seen her travel between villages and that she
should know what they wanted. Eventually, they came to the
understanding that the young men would be educated under Dr. Yacoobi,
as long as they were willing to do what she asked of them. Her first
request was that they cut their beards and keep a clean appearance.
Her
request of the young men ties in to the idea that men too must be
educated to provide a world with safe education for young women as
well. If we educate only our young women, we leave young men in the
dark without allowing them to understand a woman's struggle, and so
they continue to build lives that refuse to take a woman's opinion
seriously. This problem does not come from an inherent stupidity of
men, rather a refusal of their society to allow them to think any
differently. Dr. Yacoobi advocates that we must allow our men to
learn alongside women, and if we can come to a mutual understanding,
then the disconnect between men and women will be lessened. I think
this is a practice that needs to go on in the United States as well;
we have to teach boys from as young an age as possible the truth
about feminism, about male privilege, about intersectional feminism.
Too many times do we assume that the white man means to degrade men
and women of color, and too little do we question society's role in
creating that Frankenstein monster. If we, like Dr. Sakena Yacoobi,
can educate our boys and girls to a proper standard, then we can
hopefully rearrange those traditional gender roles toward a more
balanced gender platform.
