The "Woe" in Woman

When I was a little girl,

my momma told me

I could change the world

if I wanted to;

I could be a doctor

if I wanted to,

a politician

if I wanted to;

I could be anything

I wanted to.

At the same time,

a little girl

sitting in a village in India

was being told by her mother

that she wouldn’t be returning to school that year

because they only had enough money

to educate one kid,

and of course it would be her brother

because after all,

she would only be a housewife.

When I was a little girl,

my momma told me

I could change the world

if I wanted to.

Fast forward to eighteen,

I’m sitting in an economics class;

the teacher says

that women earn 75 cents for every dollar men make.

Did you know that?

And all the girls are infuriated.

But I sit there quiet

‘cause all I can think about

are the girls that are lying in unmarked graves

on the other side of the globe

‘cause their parents wanted a boy

160 million girls are “missing” in the world.

Did you know that?
Does that infuriate you?

You ask me why there aren’t enough women CEOs.
I ask you why an American woman is raped every 90 seconds.

Beaten every 15 seconds.

How’s that for infuriating?

Is there something defective with my X chromosome?

How many girls were sold this year?

How many women are victims of abuse?

How many of those did we forget to count?

Was it because we forgot to care?

Was it because we shut our eyes?
Was it because we drowned in the bliss of ignorance?

My eyes are wide open

and what I see

is not the few women who have succeeded,

but all those that were never given a chance.

This is not a gender issue; this is not a cultural issue; it’s a human issue.

And the question is: what are we going to do about it?

What are you going to do about it?

When I was a little girl,

my momma told me

I could change the world

if I wanted to.

But today, I’ll settle for changing minds

Why is there a "woe" in woman?