Re-empowerment of women and girls in a world in serious, urgent and multifaceted crisis – Written Statement sent to the UN CSW66
It is imperative to conjecture and debate about possible means to transmit, within human societies, in all peoples of the Earth, socio-political-economic power to people of the feminine gender or identified with femininity, especially in such a serious multifaceted crisis that we are going through, facing severe ecological imbalances, with threats of mesological, climatic and pandemic disasters, at scales, for now, unpredictable, but whose most extensive effects impact, as always, the poorest communities of the world, in terms of educational, medical-hospital, food and digital infrastructure, etc.
We consider, however, that it is essential to reiterate our opinion, already brought to light in a lecture proffered at our Parallel Event to CSW65, held on March 15, 2021: the power need not, in principle, even be granted to women and girls – it would suffice to be recognized as pre-existing, as blatantly revealed by unequivocal evidence recorded by paleoanthropologists, in matriarchal cultures from the beginnings of humanity on our planet.
Life, par excellence, revolves around women. Through the uterine cloister of women – into whom the girls will one day become –, new human beings flourish, as if, metaphorically or (perhaps) literally, pregnant women became living temples, from which new generations spring into the world!…
Urgent is any political measures that foster effective actions, whether partisan or not, arising in the sphere of public activity or in the domain of private initiative, coming from the government of nations or from the participation of NGOs, individuals or informally organized small groups, in the sense of enabling women and girls to receive education, professionalization and medical-psychological assistance, encouraging them to revive or awaken their awareness of their own power to act in the world and transform it.
Such measures, of course, must be guided by the creation of practical expedients, according to the context of natural and material resources, in the environment of each reachable feminine population, although they need to respect, to a certain extent – to be realistic and achievable –, the cultural parameters and paradigms deeply rooted in certain localities, some of them multimillennial.
The scientific community unanimously proclaims, through the simultaneous prism of various disciplines of knowledge, the glaring emergency to take immediate, effective and lasting measures so that humanity, in our small planetary corner, can survive the enormous challenges and dangers of today, especially in the field of the environmental crisis we are experiencing.
It is impossible to ignore, in this calamitous circumstance of our history, that half of the human contingents – women and girls -, continue to be rejected and vilified, just as for centuries they have been oppressed and often abused, physically, psychologically and/or morally, often in horrendously and abominable anachronistic ways.
Let us wake up before it is too late and fight for the survival of women and girls, of all of us, including men and boys… because the galloping of the “chariot of events” is so fast, that countless of the most brilliant minds, from various areas of human knowledge, consider that we have already passed the point of no return from an irreversible process of free fall, toward the disastrous bottom of the abyss of the complete extinction of our civilization and species on the globe… annihilating, with us, an expressive part of the fragile earthly biosphere that we compose.
Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar
Founding President of the Instituto Salto Quantico – Sociedade Filantrópica Maria de Nazaré
DeWittville, New York, USA
October 13, 2021
See the Portuguese version: Reempoderamento de mulheres e meninas, num mundo em crise grave, urgente e polifacética – Documento de participação do ISQ na CSW66 da ONU
