Women worldwide are the victims of senseless conflicts
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COLUMN: Food for Thought by James Currall
It was International Women’s Day on March 8, a day that celebrates the social, political and economic achievements of women.
Although it was only officially recognized by the United Nations in 1977, International Women’s Day emerged from the activities of labour movements across Europe and North America in the first decades of the 20th century.
Since then women have been increasingly recognized as particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and war, and constitute a majority of the world’s poor.
Woman textile workers began a demonstration on March 8, 1917, in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) that eventually engulfed the whole city.
Their demands were simple “Bread and Peace”. They wanted an end to World War I, to food shortages, and to czarism. This protest was an important part of the Russian Revolution. The women of Ukraine today, would undoubtedly like exactly the same, “Bread and Peace”.
As we’ve heard in the news, Russian and Ukrainian women find themselves on opposite sides of a brutal war. War polarises, and separates those caught up in it. Women in Ukraine are separated from their menfolk and don’t know when, if ever, they’ll see them again.
Ukranian people have become simply refugees. Their former lives replaced with queuing at the border, shepherding their children and elderly parents to safety and depending on the kindness of strangers for their very survival.
Sadly it’s usually women who’re the worst affected by conflict. They often become targets of sexual violence, their husbands and children may be killed – leaving them without support.
Women across the world know what it is to be shelled, assaulted and to have said goodbye for the last time. Their lives turned upside down by the ruthless ambition of their leaders, whose first priority rather than their welfare is sadly the desire for material wealth, status and power.
In the process they reduce their people to mere pawns.
That’s the tragedy of war, there are no winners amongst the general population. Selfishness and greed, anger and hostility, jealousy and resentment and above all the desire to have rather than to share and to control rather than to serve; they’re the winners in war.
As I write, the city of Mariupol in south-east Ukraine has been besieged for days. Its residents including many women and children, trapped and forced to shelter underground, melt snow for water and scavenge for food.
The city’s maternity hospital caring for pregnant women, newborn babies and children has been attacked and is no longer the place of safety that is rightly ought to be.
Faced with the brutal occupation of his country by the Romans, Jesus Christ came with a very different message. A message of love, where there’s no division on the grounds of race, creed, gender or nationality and where people look out for and support one another.
Let us hope and pray that that message breaks through in Ukraine and Russia and in all the capitals of Europe.
Ironically it was in St Petersburg (then called Leningrad) that Vladimir Putin was born in 1952.
Rev James Currall is the Episcopal priest in charge of congregations at Tain, Brora, Lairg, and Tongue.
