Bringing Attention to Five Important Women’s Issues

In recent months, we’ve heard a lot about women’s issues and their importance. A Congress debates reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act – and allows politics to get in the way of providing important protections for women who are surviving domestic violence – little attention is paid to other important women’s issues. While these particular issues are not always seen as women’s issues, they do disproportionately affect women and children. Unfortunately, many people only see or hear of these issues in random newspaper stories – or when one of them affects someone they love. Reading and hearing stories of women who are living through or have survived these problems can put a human face on them and start bringing the power of people empowerment to bear against them.

Domestic Violence

While domestic violence gets a lot of attention in the newspapers and on the legislative floors, many people still have trouble understanding how women can get trapped in abusive relationships and situations. It’s easy to dismiss domestic violence as something that happens to weak women or women who lack self-esteem. The reality is far more complex, but until we are affected by it personally – either as a victim or because someone we know and love becomes a victim – women will never feel that they can come forward and openly admit that they need help.

Trafficking and Drugs

Cartels that traffic in people and drugs tend to go hand in hand. Whether they are shipping human cargo across the borders to bring undocumented workers into the United States or selling black market babies, these criminals are the modern-day equivalent of slave runners. They spread violence in their wake and use women and children as bargaining chips, slaves, sex workers and domestic workers. It is an enormous underground market run by violent cartels that gets very little attention. Likewise, those criminals that traffic in drugs also victimize women and children, ruining lives left and right. All too often, the children and women victimized by these cartels are further victimized by the legal system which often sees them as criminals rather than victims.

Illegal Adoptions

Illegal adoptions are an offshoot of the human trafficking market. Desperate would-be parents often have no idea of the conditions that birth mothers may be held in. Selling babies on the black market is big business, and women are often treated as little more than breeding livestock. This market is one of the most under-recognized and acknowledged women’s issues of our time.

Internet Love/Money Scams

Women who are victimized by Internet love/money scams are often embarrassed to report the crimes, ashamed to admit that they were so needy or foolish. Few laws exist to deal with these criminals even though they victimize a surprisingly large segment of the population.

These under-reported women’s issues affect a huge segment of the population. Until we see their human face, they’re likely to continue being swept under the rug and forgotten along with the women who are their victims.

Making Real Life Women’s Issues Relevant to Everyone

Lately, politics has been focused heavily on women’s issues, but many people have only a basic intellectual understanding of how these issues affect women in real life. That can make it difficult for lawmakers and others who don’t see the daily effects of such women’s issues and people empowerment issues as domestic violence, human trafficking and drug cartels, to understand what it’s really like to live in a world that’s shaped by them. The inability to see the daily realities faced by women and children affected by these issues can further isolate their victims and make it seem almost impossible to ever rise about their current circumstances.

Storytelling Puts a Human Face on Women’s Issues

Throughout history, stories have put a real face on human issues. Traveling minstrels are credited with rallying the countryside to deal with injustices and occupations. They carried the stories of heroism and daring deeds to all corners of the known world. Writers like Shakespeare and Charles Dickens highlighted everyday injustices and corruption in high places, quietly fomenting revolutions that brought around huge social changes. It has always been the job of the storyteller to highlight societal problems and bring awareness to issues that matter in the world around them.

Today is no different, though we may not recognize the Shakespeare and Dickens among us. News stories only go so far in defining the scope of a problem. A statistic is just a number, and it’s hard to care about a number. You may hear that a woman is abused every 9 seconds in the United States or that one in every four women will be victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives, but there is no real emotional impact to those statistics because there is no human face attached.

Fueling People Empowerment with Stories About Women’s Issues

No change ever takes place until people care about those changes. Stories make people care. It’s easy to dismiss a faceless woman every 9 seconds, to believe that she brought it on herself somehow or to wonder why she doesn’t just leave. When that woman is someone you’ve come to know and care about, it’s much harder to dismiss her – and not just her, but the societal problems that create the situation in which she finds herself.

Today, many writers are taking on the task of bringing women’s issues into the light of day. They are creating real, breathing, conflicted women who are living with the realities of domestic violence, drugs and cartels, human trafficking and the con artists who prey on women through Internet love and money scams. From romance novels to true-life memoirs, these stories help bring about people empowerment in the same way that Dickens and Shakespeare did in centuries past – by attaching these important women’s issues to stories and faces you’ll never forget.

Do Romance Novels and People Empowerment Mix?

When most people think of romance novels, it’s not likely that people empowerment springs to mind – but there’s a a whole generation of romance novelists who believe that their novels can raise awareness and empower women and others to come to grips with situations in their lives. They look at women’s issues and see not just the issue but the women and families affected by them. These authors recognize a basic fact that all the college professors and statisticians who want to bring awareness to an issue miss – numbers don’t motivate people. Stories do.

How Romance Novels Empower Women

For decades, the lowly romance novel has been seen as the poor cousin of the literary novel. They are generally ignored by the critics and looked down upon by academia – but in reality, they touch more lives than nearly any other type of literature, or, for that matter, more than other types of literature combined. They appeal to women – and many men who won’t admit to it – who don’t think of themselves as academics and who are reading for entertainment rather than enlightenment.

In recent years, however, a growing body of academics has begun to recognize a simple truth: romance novels speak to women because, no matter how escapist they may seem, they are about the issues that are central to the lives of women. They are about small-w women’s small-I issues rather than the self-important Women’s Issues with upper case titles. Many of those issues overlap – they include domestic violence, human trafficking, the effects of Internet scams and love/money scams and the devastating effects that illegal adoption can have on all parties. But where Women’s Issues look at the problem from the outside and take an impersonal, almost lecturing tone, romance novels approach women’s issues from the inside, the space inhabited by so many of their readers and the women loved by their readers.

In taking on the voice of women involved in desperate situations, romance novels achieve something that most people empowerment programs can’t – they forge a bond between the reader and the characters in the story. They create a sense of identity and serve as a vehicle for understanding.

For the woman who lives in fear of her partner’s violent outbursts, that identification with a character can be empowering and liberating. The story is acknowledgement – a recognition from someone outside her head that there is something wrong – and it is not inside her. Even that simple thing can be the first step in people empowerment – the feeling that you are not alone is a powerful and empowering thing.

For others, these romance novels that focus on larger women’s issues offer a window into understanding that goes beyond the numbers and the statistics. They introduce readers to real women who are not cardboard cutouts with numbers pasted across their foreheads. They are not stories of 1 in every 5 women who have faced domestic violence or a faceless silhouette on a news magazine show telling about her abduction or involvement in gangs or a drug cartel. They are the stories of one woman, with a name and a face, a woman who is struggling but who is no different than their mothers, their sisters or themselves, if the circumstances were just a little different.

The next time you’re about to turn your nose up at a lowly romance novel, think again. These formulaic books, roundly looked down upon by much of academia, are actually subversive documents – and some of the most effective tools available for people empowerment.

Women’s Issues In the Forefront as Women’s History Month Draws to a Close

What did you do during Women’s History Month? Did you learn something new about women’s issues? Did you hear the stories of women from around the world – including here in the United States – who have been victims of domestic violence, human trafficking or other issues that disproportionately affect women in the world? All month long, various news networks and television shows have focused the spotlight on the role of women in the world and the problems that affect them disproportionately. Some of it ignited heated controversy on all sides of the political spectrum, but there is no controversy at all about the fact that these issues need attention.

Raising Awareness of Women’s Issues

Much of the media spotlight has served one particular purpose – raising awareness of issues that affect women. For many people, though, the heated debates and sharp rhetoric that often accompany these highly politicized stories is not enlightening. Instead, it polarizes issues on which we should all be united. No woman should be afraid to report domestic violence, for example, but news stories and commentary that shame and blame the victim in those cases often make women living in violent relationships hesitate to come forward.

Throughout history, one method of raising awareness has always served better than any other to bring attention to an issue without polarizing it. That method is storytelling. A story puts a human face on any issue and can awaken sympathies that statistics can’t. A number has no face, no heart and no consequences. The true story of a survivor of human trafficking, on the other hand, gives those who have no experience with it a reference point and gives them a window into the world of the survivor.

One romance with a heroine who has survived domestic violence and is moving on with her life can do more to advance the cause of women’s issues than hundreds of demonstrations and boycotts. Thrillers about drug cartels and their cost in human lives touch people where they live and raise awareness in a way that is not controversial. A woman living in a violent relationship who reads a story where the heroine struggles with the reality of loving or leaving may finally find the courage to share her story with family or friends.

As this women’s history month comes to a close, think back on the stories you’ve heard from the media – the news stories and statistics – and consider which of them you’ll remember next month or next year. Then pick up a romantic thriller that takes on one of the difficult women’s issues of our times and read it. You’ll come away with a deeper understanding of how women and children dealing with these situations survive and make their way through them to come out on the other side.

Putting the Focus on Women’s Issues

Domestic violence and economic inequality often take the spotlight in discussions of women’s issues, but they make up only part of the spectrum of abuses in which women are frequently the victim. While those are most certainly important women’s issues and are deserving of every bit of attention they get, it’s also important for the world to recognize the many other criminal activities and abuses that often target women and children to a greater degree than they do the general population.

That is not to say that one person’s suffering or victimization is less important because of his gender – there is much truth to the saying that women’s issues are human issues. It is important, however, to bring attention to criminal activities and abuses that unfairly target women and children because they are frequently at the root of abuses that oppress entire populations.

Human Trafficking

Trafficking in human beings has been recognized as an abhorrent abuse of human rights since Biblical times, but entire peoples have managed to overlook the horrors and abuses by assigning the victims of trafficking a lower status of humanity. Sometimes sensationalized as “white slavery” or trafficking in sex slaves, there is far more to the criminal exchange of human beings for cash. While there are organized criminal cartels that specialize in the kidnapping and sale of “white slaves,” human trafficking is both broader and deeper than that. In fact, there may be just as many women and children imported to serve as domestic help, farm labor and factory workers as there are imported as sex slaves.

Illegal Adoption

Often, stories about illegal adoption focus on the adoptive parents as victims of unscrupulous agencies and mothers seeking to sell their children for cash. In reality, the illegal adoption trade is a criminal industry that often victimizes the mothers and babies even more than it does the parents who avail themselves of the illegal services. It’s not unusual for criminal cartels who engage in human trafficking to imprison women, impregnate them and take their children from them by force or deception. Illegal adoption is, by its victimization of mothers and infants, an important women’s issue.

Internet Scams and Love/Money Scams

It may seem odd to include Internet scams and scams targeting women on dating sites under the same heading as illegal adoptions and human trafficking, but these scams often put women in danger as well as bilking them of hard-earned savings. Women who are deceived by hucksters and criminals pretending to be “looking for love” on the Internet often find themselves victimized by violent criminals and thieves who use manipulation and threats to extort money from them.

Understanding the full breadth of women’s issues and the crimes that typically target women and children can help put the focus on the criminals, where they belong, rather than on the women and children who are the victims. The more you know about human rights abuses and women’s issues, the more able you will be to protect yourself against them.

Romance Novels and Thrillers Take On Women’s Issues

The classic bodice-ripper has undergone major changes in the past decade or so. The new era of romance novels and thrillers take on some of the biggest women’s issues of our time, providing inspiration and information along with their entertaining tales. The heroines in some of today’s top romance thrillers have more to worry about than whether the dashing new doctor is more interested in the OR nurse. They’re facing some of the most troubling and recalcitrant issues affecting women today – human trafficking, domestic violence, internet scams and international cartels that traffic in sex, drugs and babies.

Domestic abuse often makes headlines when sensational stories hit the media circuit, but it’s kept a low profile in the most-read women’s genre, the romance novel. Romance publishers, who believe that readers want happy-ever-after stories with plucky heroines and sterling heroes, have rigidly stayed away from novels that highlight one of the toughest women’s issues of our time. Some authors, however, aren’t afraid to take on the subject and their works provide an illuminating and sympathetic insight into the challenges and obstacles faced by women in abusive relationships.

“New Beginnings,” a novel by Patti Ann Bengen, tells the story of Heather Langdon, a young wife whose marriage slowly dissolves into a nightmare of emotional, mental and physical abuse. The sensitive, delicate portrayal leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the choices women make that keep them in violent relationships and challenges the myth that these things only happen to a certain type of woman. Immersed in reading about Heather’s life, a reader might recognize a sister, a best friend or even herself, and gain a better understanding of how domestic violence affects not only those within the relationship, but nearly everyone who touches it.

As popular fiction begins to recognize and deal with real women’s issues, it offers a chance to reach those women who feel isolated and alone, not only directly but by increasing the understanding of how these so-called “women’s issues” affect far more than women. At the same time, the emergence of these new voices in romance and thrillers recognizes that while society may not be ready to stop sweeping the realities of domestic violence under the rug, it has at least grown to the point where it’s ready to lift the corner of the carpet and peek beneath it.

If you are a woman or a man affected by domestic violence, there is help available. You’ll find many resources, both local and national, created to assist those affected by domestic violence and other women’s issues. No one deserves to be victimized or to live in fear with the threat of violence. Reach out to one of the many organizations working to end domestic violence and take back control of your life.