OMG! <hyperventilates> What have I let myself in for!? First bit of feminist activism...

[FlamingOBingo]

Have rashly decided to organise a Join Me On The Bridge event on IWD next week. Have been offered support from a friend who 'knows people' and the local paper has just called and wants to arrange for a reporter to call me and a photographer to take a photo of me on the bridge to encourage people to come along!!!!

Trying to tell myself I am NOT OUT OF MY DEPTH but I am not believing it!

Going to need a whole heap of support from you guys to keep the momentum and my enthusiasm going for this - I am very nervous!

Sounds like it's all coming together nicely

SOrry to be ignorant but what is 'Join Me On The Bridge'?

It's a world-wide campaign by Women For Women International to raise awareness and, hopefully, money to help women rebuild their lives after the horrors of living in a war-torn country.

At the moment the urgent issue is Afghanistan, where women's lives have improved a minute amount since the fall of the Taliban, but which risk deteriorating again as soon as the troops pull out. The obvious way of making sure that doesn't happen, would be for the UN to include women in their peace negotiations, but they decided not to. They eventually relented and let 10 token women into their 70-strong committee .

A lot is at stake here - 87% of Afghan women regularly experience violence of some sort - marital rape and beatings, mostly. But also 'punishments' by their communities for not conforming to their religious laws. Girls in the countryside have acid thrown in their faces on their way to school, and teachers who try to educate girls get shot. And this is still happening despite the Taliban being overthrown and the UN being present...imagine what will happen when we leave .

The women in Afghanistan campaigning for a voice are risking far, far more than our Western suffragette's risked 100 years ago. It's so depressing that we could actually be having an impact in a very, very unequal country and yet the opportunity is not being taken by the UN.