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Yasser
Bagersh directed and Meseret Yerga choreographed the
performance in The Butterfly Story. It was heartening to see
UNFPA support experimental work in critical communication on
gender and development issues that have, over the years,
acquired static frames of reference.
The dance
performance of young people holding the production together,
calls for special felicitation. Hopefully, Addis Abeba will
get to see more of their work. The occasional technical
glitches in the documentaries apart, the production did
succeed in creating a sense of continuity between its
different mediums, and extended the possibilities of
narratives on women's oppression and empowerment, even
though sometimes stuck in the stock development narrative
frame.
The
medium of modern dance worked effectively in creating strong
expressions and narratives of pain and oppression, psychic
struggles to break free, and individual as well as
collective sense of empowerment. The strength of the visual
narrative of dance was that it could escape the static
images of victimhood that discourses of women's oppression
so often enforce upon the mind.
The
strength of "The Butterfly Story," a collage of women's
tales of coming to be, implied in the symbolic journey from
caterpillar to butterfly, lay in its focus on women's acts
of survival than on victimhood, or rather when it chose to
speak of plight and suffering from out of the acts of
survival and empowerment.
The story
and alternate forms of narratives are effective tools in
shaping perception. A story traces agency and process and
takes one out of the static images that shape perceptions of
gender violence. Story matters. Narrative choice matters.
Perspective matters. Expression matters. Hence for community
development programs all over the world, the story in
performance as a means for initiating dialogue has proven to
be a powerful medium for social change.
For
organizations like UNFPA to recognize this takes gender
corrective work in empowering women a very long way.
Hopefully the project will see many communities in Ethiopia
engaging with stories told in many languages and dialogue on
gender issues through stories.
Gender
equality was an important theme in the entire program. It
appeared to be the rationale behind all the work that was
done and UNFPA's own philosophy behind project designing.
"Gender equality" did not, however, come across as a
relevant term for all the cases shown. For example, the
discontinuing of FGM was used as an instance of gender
equality in the program.
In
societies where male circumcision and female circumcision
are practiced, circumcision was initially conceived as an
act of sexual ethics, sexual disciplining and reproductive
ethics for both men and women. In our age of medical ethics,
the practice of FGM is sought to be discontinued on grounds
of reproductive health and health generally. There is a
story to be told there that concerns a conflict between two
ideas of ethics of the body and of the gendered being, and
of the shift from the one to the other. A tale much more
complex than that of barbarism to civilization that is often
implied in the development work of eradicating FGM!
And it is
a story that the idea of gender justice captures more
adequately in all its complexities of agency and navigation
through community power relations than gender equality does.
Gender equality is part of gender justice which involves a
larger sphere of thinking through women's issues and
strategizing for change and empowerment. For organizations
working in gender and development, creating a larger
paradigm for debate and action than gender equality is
important to make the work of gender equality more effective
and go even beyond.
Besides,
gender corrective action and gender justice do not
necessarily have to be thought in terms of women's equality
with men. Making men the measure of what women must aspire
to be, or have, does not quite empower women's cause. What
is good for women and what empowers women needs to be
evaluated according to the needs of women that might be
different from those of men.
Where
gender inequality needs to be addressed, i.e., in the sphere
of work and value at home and outside, many stories remain
to be told. For instance, in most parts of Ethiopia carrying
of water and firewood is women's labour. Women carry them on
their back over long distances to the detriment of their
health.
Often
girls cannot attend schools for their family requires them
for this labour. Pack animals like donkeys are used by men
to carry their loads. No such luck for women. They must
carry their own loads. If deep tube wells were to be built
and women's organizations in each community supplied with
pack animals and canvas bags to carry water, it would go a
long way towards women's empowerment.
If such
assistance could even induce the young adolescent males to
share in this labour, it would save many women, for
oftentimes it is on their way to fetch water that young
girls get forcefully abducted. Hopefully, such work in
support of gender equality will happen in UNFPA's ambitious
2009 Leave No Woman Behind project, and there will be many
stories to tell to continue the good work that "The
Butterfly Story" has begun. |
