To be born a daughter is a lost life. (Nepali proverb)

Get Organized: Justice for Women

The facts:

• One of 25 of the world's women who should be alive today is not, simply because she was conceived a female-these women were victims of gender-based abortion, infanticide, neglect
• In nearly every conflict in today's world, women and children form the majority of the victims
• Women make up half the world's population, perform three-quarters of the agricultural work in poor societies, own 10 percent of the world's land, comprise 70 percent of those living in absolute poverty, and hold 16 percent of the seats in the world's governments
• In many countries, less than one-quarter of girls complete primary school. An educated girl will typically marry later, have fewer and healthier children, and have less chance of contracting AIDS. She also has options should she end up in an abusive marital situation
• 2-3 million girls enter the sex trade every year. Another abusive situation for girls is often domestic service-the no. 1 employer of young women world-wide (they are often psychologically and/or sexually abused in this setting)
• Childbirth is a time of great risk for many of the world's poor women: Some 500,000 women die in childbirth every year; nearly half the world's women are anemic (iron deficiency), which is a leading cause of maternal mortality; pregnant women are much more susceptible to malaria, which kills a million people in the world every year
• Ordinary tasks for women are dangerous as well: Every 20 seconds a woman or child around the world dies from the effects of breathing the smoke from indoor cook fires; carrying wood and water takes hours a day and up to 30 percent of a woman's daily caloric consumption
  

Take Action:

Lead the way in bringing justice to women with positive actions!

• Build relationships with women around the world by
• taking part in an NCP Learning Tour where women's well-being is a focus (Nepal , Sudan , Central America)
• connecting with Women for Women International, an outreach to women affected by war
• Hold a fund-raiser to support young women's education through NCP's Give a Girl a Chance program ($10 can keep a girl in school for a month in Africa!)
• Reduce women's work load and protect women from indoor cook smoke by supporting NCP's If a Tree Falls. program to build wood-conserving, lung-preserving adobe stoves in Guatemala (provide a stove for $81!)
• Take part in the International Day For the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25)

Wake up your community or church or campus or club!

• Bring in a speaker on women's issues for convo or class or church service; use NCP's justice-related info-blurbs in the campus paper or church newsletter
• Highlight the challenges facing women by setting up a "women's village"-a site where people are acting out women's daily life-carrying water and wood, cooking over fires, grinding flour by hand, being harassed by men
• Use NCP skits Anna and the General or A Woman's Place to highlight women's persistence in the cause of justice and peace.

Wake up legislators!

• Get together a letter writing campaign or petition drive reminding Congress the United States joins Sudan, Nauru, Tonga, Iran, Palau, Qatar, Somalia, and Swaziland as the only nations not to ratify the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw
  House of Representatives
  Washington, DC 20515
  
  United States Senate
  Washington, DC 20510

Photos: Puja and mother Makomali carry bricks all day near Kathmandu , Nepal ; Lucia and son, Guatemalan community of CopalAA, a village of returned refugees; girl in Honduran community of Agua Zarca. Photos by David Radcliff.