“VOF Week 1 (The “other” issues? Surely there is hope for rural women)”

“VOF Week 1 (The “other” issues? Surely there is hope for rural women)”

1. Write a 500 word or less article that describes:
   • What most excites you about Web 2.0;
   • What solutions you think Web 2.0 brings to the global women's empowerment movement and;
   • Why and how it is empowering for you

Issues concerning and affecting women are critical in a world of increasing violence. Most cultures, religions, and societies consider women as things ready to adjust themselves for usage as are willed by “their Masters”1 . No control of their sexuality and economic autonomy especially in rural areas. They are reproductive machines and sexual gratifiers. What injustice to voiceless women in a dominantly male governed society. To whom will they work up to complain since even social welfare workers are men pruned to the same behaviours?
Sharing experiences world wide of women by women and for women seems among few, the best channel to voice out this cruelness. Where else could we share our experiences on a daily basis apart from such a warm and interactive side like Web 2.0. Some of us are culturally prohibited to speak out the cruelness inflicted on us but web 2.0 embraces us with a warm speak up. What a dynamic conferencing web 2.0 offers. I read about Iran, medical carelessness in Cameroon, peace and marriage poems from potentiated journalists which I would never have known without getting into contact with this dynamic site.

In this respect, I think Web 2.0 brings about two major solutions to the global women’s empowerment movement. Firstly, it provides a poll of real life happenings to women on a daily basis which order wise would be virtually impossible to know even with enormous risk and financial investments in research. Secondly, women’s comments and experiences are educative to other women who order wise would be ignorant about how to go about with certain issues especially in culturally restricted female communications. Global daily interaction with women and girls helps women worldwide to know what others in different parts of the world are going through. Thus offering alternative ways of : speaking up, channels of sending global petitions for their rescue and possibly physical interventions. This is very practical for war and conflict dominated environments where women are violated sexually and can’t speak up. An example is the sexually violated women in Congo

I find web 2.0 empowering because it is educative and enables the production of the “other knowledge” by the “other people” for themselves and the world at large. It empowers me by causing me to think creatively and speak out on issues affecting not only women in my community but in other communities.

1.We use their masters here to refer to men who are very conservative, brutal and cruel to their wives or women as a social category. They never see why a woman or girl should speak up, complain or reject their views