Stand up and be counted
On 17th October, I forget the year, I think it was 2017, I was fortunate to attend a networking event, which brought together myriad healthcare professionals, mainly nurses, who were there to gain insight into the often oppressive and challenging world in which black and minority ethnic nurses live and work, many of whom are women, and to understand the contribution we could all make to eliminate discrimination for good.
Making a difference requires us all to take a stance. To stand up and be counted. This is about all of us. About our willingness to galvanise our strengths. It is about learning about ourselves and others, what we will accept and tolerate, and what we won’t. Sometimes it can take many years to find out what that is. To help find your cause, you might want to ask yourself just one question ‘What angers me so much I want to take action?’. This isn’t simply about asking yourself this question; it’s also about answering it.
For many of us our everyday lives are too much of a challenge to even think about taking political action. To think about becoming an activist. Many are simply too afraid to contemplate what will happen if they do. A belief that our voices will not be heard only compounds this. I am no different. However, in the very same month of attending the network event, I wrote to my member of parliament decrying the impact of the abortion laws in Ireland. These oppressive laws endanger the lives of women, and this angers me. I needed to take a stance. Only a small one, but a stance nonetheless. I have no idea why I did it or if anything had particularly happened at that time to make me lobby my MP, nonetheless I did. I have written to my MP many times since.
In 2018, whilst scrolling through social media during the height of the Football World Cup, I saw the image of a woman with a bloody nose in the shape of the England flag. I was horrified. My first thought was to ask why anyone would want to deface the England Flag in this way… And then I looked again.
This image accompanied the title: ‘If England gets beaten, so will she’ – the link between World Cup and violence explained. It was published on July 11th. This was the same day that Croatia beat England 2-1 in the semi-finals.
As I read the article published in ‘The Conversation’ I was horrified. I was literally stopped in my tracks. The message portrayed by the article was simple. It was about the impact of domestic violence, not only that, but how violence at home escalates when favourite teams lose. Difficult to understand isn’t it? Tell that to the women it affects every day.
I was incensed. Women getting punched, kicked, shouted at, perhaps even murdered, simply because England lost. And this happens across the World, because when one team wins, whether in cricket, rugby league, rugby union and all those other sports; a team always loses. Unless it’s a draw. No doubt it depends on whether that draw is significant, whether a woman dreads him walking through the door or not.
Soon after this I became aware of the ‘16 Days of Activism’, this global campaign, this ‘call to action’ led annually by United Nations Women calls for communities around the world to take action to eliminate violence against women and girls. Occurring from 25th November; The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – to 10th December; Human Rights Day, it captures the horror of violence and encourages us all to punch a hole right through it. Perhaps there is a need for violence after all. If only metaphorically speaking.
