by Ann Taylor

Created on: May 20, 2009

Women's rights are compromised every single day, but truly, the issue is not about rights, it is about the freedom to live. No one is held hostage to society's norms - it is an individual choice. A woman is only a slave if she allows herself to be chained to slavery. A woman is powerless only when she releases her power. A woman is only afraid if she allows fear to consume her. And, most of all, a woman's womb belongs to her and is not for lease.

Throughout history, women's voices have been stifled only to bloom like a desert rose that rises up from the burning sand. The pages of "Women On War" edited by Daniela Gioseffi and published in 1988 by Simon and Schuster, Inc., sing with the glory of women who have found the freedom to live freely, their voices no longer muffled, their steps bold, their words compassionate, their hands held in prayer, their arms wide open, their only hope to share their vision of life without war and our right as women to be the change in our world.

From the first chapter titled "Prophecies and Warnings," Michelle Najlis of Nicaragua writes: "they trapped us, leaving us no defense, but our hands united with millions of hands."

In the same chapter, Tat'yana Mamonova from the U.S.S.R shares her view of "Women's Active Role": "I think woman is altruistic. She gives life and appreciates life. That's one of my main concepts. I think the woman is organically against war, for example, and nuclear and chemical destruction and she can really save the world if she is permitted to play an active role in government in different countries, the Soviet Union among them."

From the chapter "Causes, Realities and Cures", Maya Angelou from the U.S.A. shares the plight in Africa as war consumes it:

"Now she is rising
remember her pain
remember the losses
her screams loud and vain
remember her riches
her history slain
now she is striding
although she had lain"

And, Margaret Mead of the U.S.A. reminds us in "False Heroes" how war is an invention of men: "Warfare is just an invention known to the majority of human societies by which they permit their young men either to accumulate prestige or avenge their honor or acquire loot or wives or slaves or grab lands or cattle or appease the blood lust of their gods or the restless souls of the recently dead. It is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention."

Scattered throughout the book, we still find love of man in the voices of women. In the chapter "Violence,

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>