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.