One Billion Rising for Women’s Issues

On Valentine’s Day in countries all around the world, women will be taking to the streets to highlight one of the most important women’s issues of our times – violence against and inequality toward women. Unlike many other people empowerment movements, the One Billion Rising movement will be using a unique method to get their message across: dance flash mobs. In more than 60 countries and dozens of cities at noon on February 14, music will suddenly ring out, women will rise from where they are working, walking and sitting and … dance.

The One Billion Rising is a project of VDay, a global movement to end violence against women. Spearheaded by Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning playwright of “The Vagina Monologues,” V-Day supports anti-violence movements around the world. For years, the group has sponsored events on Valentine’s Day, but One Billion Rising is the most ambitious undertaking yet.

Facts:

One in three women globally will be victims of violence directed against women. This includes organized violence by governments and drug cartels alike, domestic violence, kidnapping and illegal adoption rings and one-on-one physical violence against women. While we read and hear a lot about domestic violence and other violence against women, little is being done to address the root causes and attitudes that support those who commit violence.

One of those root causes is the implicit acceptance that each case of domestic violence, each physical assault, each rape and each kidnapping is a singular incident, that there is no underlying cause that erupts in multiple ways that hurt and damage women throughout the world. That denial – the refusal to admit that there is a problem – manifests itself as indifference of authorities who shrug helplessly in the face of systemic and cultural abuses against women, familial denial of domestic violence and a collective silence and lack of outrage from the general public.

That silence will be broken in cities all over the world on February 14 and be replaced by the driving beat of One Billion Rising’s theme song. “Break the Chain.” Organizations from Mumbai to New York City, encompassing women from Somalia to Paducah, are participating. In some cities, there will be dozens of flash mobs. In other areas, women will travel for hours to join their sisters in a dance against violence. The goal of One Billion Rising is to engage one billion women and men in an unmistakable statement: we won’t stand by in silence anymore.

Sister, won’t you dance? Sister, won’t you rise?

The insistent chorus is one that we all need to heed if we’re to finally make inroads against women’s violence and tackle what may be one of the most defining women’s issues of our time.