Editor’s Note: We received the following guest article from Jean Cantwell, Chapter

JR, Branson, Missouri, on the importance of educating women and girls. Those affiliated with Cottey understand the significance of educated women. In fact, as we received this article, we had just finished four short features on Cottey students and their achievements. This article dovetailed nicely with the features and only emphasizes the importance of supporting the education of women and girls. Think your support of women’s education doesn’t matter? Read Jean Cantwell’s article, look at the remarkable things these four Cottey students are doing, and visit www.girleffect.org. After that, we believe you’ll understand how important your support is.
~SR

by Jean Cantwell

I heard the newscaster on TV as I walked through the room, “Marauders burned the school for girls.” The words burned into my heart. I did not hear in which country it had happened, but I knew that school would never be rebuilt. I suddenly envisioned a whole community of little girls who would never read about the freedom that women enjoy in the United States. They would never be able to have a career in a dentist’s office, or become a nurse, or operate their own business. They could never read about the history of their own nation. How could they teach their children about heroes who show courage and honesty, about the pursuit of happiness, or religions of the world, or the satisfaction of achieving excellence or about art? I wondered how many schools for girls had been burned in that country without our having heard about them. It was not just one community that had stifled the desire to learn for women.

Men dominate those societies where women cannot read, cannot walk on the street alone, and cannot drive a car. Women cannot rebel to regain their freedom when they have no ability to communicate with anyone who can tell them what liberty is. They do not understand that women can be educated and can live independently. They have no skills to find like-minded women to organize and demand their rights as human beings. They live totally subjugated to the male society that keeps them confined behind the walls of their homes except when they don the burkha that totally covers their head, arms, body, and legs, that hampers their movements almost as much as the ankle chains of prisoners.

One of my P.E.O. Sisters lived in a “women wear burkhas” nation for over a year when her husband worked there in the oil industry. She told us how a burkha restrains a woman simply because it is so cumbersome. She called it “the black bag.” The burkha restricts her peripheral vision. In some countries, the women wear the veil that has a thread, lattice-like covering over the eyes. That would be like trying to see through a heavily woven screen. The covering over her nose made it difficult to breathe, and it added to the heat held within her robe. The temperature in some of those countries often exceeds 100 degrees.

My friend could not leave her house without wearing “the black bag.” When meeting a man on the street, she cast her eyes down for fear he would see her blue eyes and become enraged. If a woman’s burkha was considered to be an inch shorter than required, any man on the street is allowed to hit her with a stick or other weapon.

She spoke of a particular afternoon when she was not permitted to enter an air conditioned ice cream store with her husband. He brought her an ice cream cone to eat outside in the heat, and I still do not understand how she managed to slide it under her robe, to get to her mouth. What a mess that must have been!

I dare not use even her first name, because she has recently moved with her husband to Yemen. She said the restrictions are not as severe as they were in her first overseas home, but again, she will not be able to move freely as an American woman. She understands what American freedom is. She will return to the United States of America. She will continue to support Cottey College and all the projects that help women to gain an education.

I thank God that women in this nation can go to school, to college and universities for advanced degrees, that each woman may achieve her goals according to her ambition and her willingness to work. We are women who can educate our children to achieve their highest potential.

At that moment I heard the broadcast, I was preparing to go to the Missouri State Convention in Columbia. Dr. Judy Rogers was one of the excellent, inspirational speakers at the convention. She fired up the delegates with her enthusiastic passion for the merits of Cottey College. In the afternoon, she led three workshops with mounting excitement over the progress and needs of Cottey, and she captured the male segment with the charms of OUR school as she spoke at the BIL dinner that night. We worked her hard that day! She was brilliant throughout. She was burning with fiery words for Cottey. She led us to understand how important it is for us, as members of P.E.O., to support the College by being informed about Cottey so that we can carry that message to worthy young women who will benefit from the Cottey experience. P.E.O.s and alumnae are the best Three More for Tomorrow...and Today source to enroll students and to support the College financially.

I think about the “school for girls was burned” phrase every day. It has burned into my brain. I cannot rebuild that school nor influence anyone who will, but I can say, over and over, to those who listen and those who don’t, “We must be aware how blessed we are that we can educate women.” That is synonymous with, “Women must continue to be allowed to develop all their skills, increase their knowledge, achieve all that their talents will allow and become leaders to enhance ‘the good life’ for all. We love and teach our children to contribute to the peace of the world as they grow to be thoughtful, loving leaders.” Women are powerful only if they have the freedom to “be” all that they can “be.”

The Suffragettes grow more important in my mind with each passing year. It was in 1920 that women gained the vote under the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In the earlier centuries of humanity upon this Earth, where and when did women have the right to vote, that is, to be equal to men in running the government? Centuries! Thousands of years! Not only is the vote liberating, it is also symbolic of women’s rights to make their own decisions. I remember when a teacher’s job was terminated if she got married. Does that mean women were punished if they chose to enjoy a personal life having a family? The vote was symbolic of acceptance of women in the business and corporate world. In America, suffrage was no longer “restricted by race” in the 15th Amendment enacted in 1870. That ethnic group was liberated before the wives of loving husbands allowed them to express their views in a secret vote. I wonder how many were still tongue tied in expressing their views openly at home. Let us not allow women, in any nation, to be slaves for lack of education.

It is incumbent that women support higher education for women at every opportunity.