Persuasive Essay- Should Women have

Persuasive Essay- Should Women have Rights?
WOMEN SHOULD HAVE RIGHTS
There are so many problems in the world that many people can’t seem to agree or disagree on. Some of these issues are based on some of the simplest things such as ethnic background, who you are married too, how you live your life and the decisions some countries make that affect a whole people. Some of these issues can and have moved into a nationwide or worldwide struggle to change the issues at hand.
Women have rights in countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, parts of Egypt, and a few other European countries. But a lot of the Middle Eastern countries don’t really respect their women as such. Men are looked at as superior to the women, for example, in the United States a woman can get the same job or better as those jobs for men. But in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, women aren’t even allowed to leave their homes without permission from the men of the house let alone get a job. Some of these generalizations have been mentioned on TV, news articles, magazine articles, and in some other public form.
In Muslim countries, women suffer from honour killings. These are generally carried out by the men in the women’s family for being disobedient or being suspected for sexual transgressions. A lot of times, even women who are raped are killed for defiling the family’s honour (Muslim Countries). This has been known to mostly happen in Islamic countries where men are the dominant figures in the countries.
Reported incidents of this occurring is, A 16 year old Jordanian girl had her throat slit by her brother after having been raped by one of her other brothers. An Egyptian father paraded his daughter’s severed head through the streets shouting, “I have avenged my honour.” A 12 year old Jordanian girl returned home one evening from a walk with her friends and was confronted by her raging father who was yelling that she had dishonored the entire family. He proceeded to beat her with sticks and iron chains until she died. When the police asked him what happened, he told them that he killed his only daughter because she went for a walk without his permission (Muslim Countries).
The honour killings also occur amongst Arab Christians who claim that it is their tradition. Tradition is always religion’s ally in the subjugation of women (Muslim Countries). This is also a major player in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and other rights issues.
Something that is also considered a huge violation of women’s human rights is FGM or Female Genital Mutilation (WHO). This procedure is generally performed between infancy and 15 years of age. This procedure includes three different stages. Some stages are more extreme than the other. Stage one involves a Clitoridectomy. This process involves partial or total removal of the clitoris, and sometimes, very rarely, the prepuce is removed (WHO). Stage two involves Excision. This process involves partial or total removal of the clitoris, labia minora, with or without the excision of the labia majora. Stage three is Infibulations. This is when they narrow the vaginal opening by making a covering seal. They make the seal by cutting and repositioning the inner and sometimes outer labia. This happens sometimes with or without moving the clitoris. Each one of these is very painful, harmful to healthy genital tissue, and have lifelong affects on the women affected by it. In these countries these procedures are performed by untrained practitioners with no form of anesthetic (Contemporary Human Rights Issues). Some of the cutting instruments to perform these procedures are broken glass, tin lids, scissors, or unsterilized razors (CHRI). With this, come pain, and the chances of infections, hemorrhaging, obstructed labor later in life, and the spread of HIV. The countries and tribes that do this defend saying that it is part of their culture and it would be against their rights if the UN try to make it illegal.
Both FGM and honour killings are against multiple articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They both violate Article 1 which states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” The way that this is being violated is that the women in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries are being treated unfairly and are having their rights either limited or taken completely away from them.
Article 2 which states, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, notional or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing, or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” Both of these limit this article because they are women they are limited and looked down upon by men and the society. So they violate the distinction of sex.
Article 5 which states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” By the cruel punishment the women endure with the honour killings and the FGM this greatly violates this right.
Article 23 which states, “1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 2. Everyone, without discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests (UDHR).” The reason this gets violated is because in most Middle Eastern countries women are not allowed to work. Or if they do they are treated very different than men.
This is the declaration that the UN has come up with in order to state everyone’s rights given at birth no matter who you are. But the problem is that countries make their own Declarations within their own countries. Some of these declarations suppress the rights for women. For example, In Iran’s Constitution, Article 102 states, “Women who appear on the streets and in public without the prescribed ‘Islamic Hejab’ will be condemned to 74 strokes of lash.” This shows that they will give there women cruel and inhuman treatment if they express and show off their face. This is a major violation of the women’s rights given by this declaration. Another way that the government of Iran limits the rights of women is Article 18, which states that married women requires their husband’s permission to apply for a passport (Official Laws against women in Iran).
By showing how some women around the world that don’t have rights suffer cruel treatment, and it is against the Declaration made by the UN, women should have rights. Women should be equal as men, treated with respect of that of a man, and have the same rights.