Transcript

The command of ordinary women | Marianne Pearl | TEDxBarcelonaWomen

hi my name is Salma Hayek Pinault and I chime for justice hi i'm beyonce knowles Carter and I chime for health what happens when we educate girls we empower them this is not a fringe issue this is an issue that is basic to absolutely every issue poni thought that a tiny device like this could be a weapon the click of a button we can be connected around the world you can spread messages that lead to revolution the most powerful to a woman can have is her own education justice three things to change the world my name is Katy Perry and I tried for justice and justice my name is Ben Affleck and I train for health education education I triumph or my daughter ID shine from inada I chime from my mother my grandmother my mom all the faria tomorrow my name is Julia Roberts and I chime for every woman Leslie's very closely to the voices that have never been heard before I'm sure you must be women out by now so I'm sorry because I'm gonna talk about women again but so this is the organization I work for time for change and as you see has a big part that's the crowdfunding and the other part which is what I do is storytelling it's time for change is a very powerful campaign for a simple reason is that powerful partners have come together to try to help women meaning people influential people like Beyonce like Solomonic all these artists but also social media like Facebook or Twitter the Bill Gates Foundation and more so obviously when you have a so much powered you know coming together the result is powerful but my role is to sort of keep the person the ordinary people at the heart of the story and the reason why I committed to women's issues are viewing journalists for many years but I've been working on this issue for maybe 15 years that's a bit less and it all started actually when I saw this picture this is all those little babies here there's actually double that amount in real life but all these little babies here have lost their father to the attack on the World Trade Center so the the mothers the mothers came together and this conversation you know started sparkling what do we do what do we tell our kids how do we find hope basically that was the idea how do we find hope and and and one said you know we need to go in search of hope and that stayed with me and I felt like well you know I had lived a similar situation than this women had I knew exactly what they were going through and you they what they were talking about and I thought okay I'm gonna do that I'm going to search for hope but I'm not gonna do it in and I'm gonna define that whole meaning I don't want this is right after 9/11 right so I don't want a religion hope I don't want a spiritual hope I'm going to look for genuine human hope so so I did that and my instinct told me to turn towards women to self search for and that's I had very little more than that and also I felt well you know I know what men are thinking I don't know what women are thinking and that's when I realized that you know even when I went to school or everything I never had an account of what women went through say you know when we you taught the second world war there's no women there as if they never existed right it's the same with every conflict women are victims but who are they what is their stories what I would not let why aren't we let them speak why don't we let them speak why what's happening what's the story so this book I went for I went to 18 countries profile 18 women who my criteria for them was also that they would have stood alone at some point meaning that whatever they did at some point no one was there to tell them he was the right thing to do no one was that to encourage them they just did it so I introduced you to people for me who exemplify very much what it means and with the potential of giving a voice to women and to the voiceless in general so my first so the glucose from goes from a cleaning lady in Morocco no actually Moroccan cleaning lady in France and to a president was Johnson Johnson Sirleaf from Liberia but I'm going to tell you about my cleaning lady because she's my favorite and so she actually does not anymore cleaning lady these pictures I'm going to show you has been taken three weeks away in can that's also her in can posing with her you know the actress that played her role and a director and because she speaks so much the director is having astronaut and and that's her she's talking so the true story of that woman so the film she did a book even though she was able to write and explain and this book was just adapted for I was just presented in can and one great award but this lady fatima she grew up in morocco and and only went to school for three years after three years she was taken out of school you have to work then she was married off to a man who took her to France and had two little girls with her and then abandoned her so here's fatty mine Paris two girls to raise no skills illiterate and and that's it she starts working she said and what can she do clean the people's homes but this girl when she was little and she remember when she went at school she remembered like how the love she had for literature right and she didn't read herself much but the teacher would read her Victoria go and that was her favorite writer and and she had this thing in her obviously none of that you know could emerge in their life that was designed for her so so she proved twenty years she was she was a cleaning lady but what she did is that she she started writing phonetically you know on her kitchen table every night after coming back from work and she wrote about what it's like to be new cleaning lady that nobody sees nobody notices she doesn't exist isn't interchange the ball even her kids don't look at her and she writes about this right at some point she has an accident and twenty years into it and to that doctor for the first time she tells you know her story and says this is what happened to me this is what I wanted to be but I did write phonetically a little bit you know and the doctor looked at the material transcribed it into French and the rest is history Fatima is up there but more importantly you know this is someone this is what your typical person that didn't have a voice that no one was really interested in her voice and when she took it it really because she went and herself found a publisher and all this when she took it it turns out that thousands and thousands and thousands of women all over Europe were living exactly the same situation and for the first time these women started speaking out speaking with their own kids speaking with their husbands so all this like you know super tense situation that was there has been sort of relieved thanks to Fatima's courage I know exactly I also grew up in Paris so I know what she was up against and I have the greatest admiration for for someone like her and she's also she's very instrumental in me thinking you know I have to concentrate on women but not only women not women in general know women as collective know women as an ideal but just women as as like their potential for feeling justice in a way that is so raw and so pure that you can stop them basically no so the second person those was also very instrumental it's very different this is my Yoli maoli I met her in Colombia for this book I spent a week with her in the suburbs and she lives you know extremely violent suburb out of Bogota and what happened to her is that when she was 12 years old her best friend was shot in front of her gang violence and she realized that no one was going to do anything about it you know there was not gonna be an investigation you know there wouldn't be nothing he just died that's it you know that's that's how hopeless people were there so what she did maoli again alone she took out all her friends all you know the kids from the neighborhood brought them to like halls like a hole in the ground where they used to play and she said you know we have to take over you know we have to do something and they started talking about so she created that think tank of children and they started talking about violence here she is with one of the kids of the neighborhood and and here she is when she started like doing her her bigger action so basically these kids started talking and they all realized that violence start at home everyone had violence in their homes so they started you know trying to work in their family and said you know talk to their father sort of their mothers maybe we don't have to you know shatter each other or kill each other all of that and and the idea developed so in such a major way that she managed to stop the the gangs the the drug cartels the the military for an entire day to stop fighting for an entire day so children can go and cast the vote and the question was the question was what kind of country do you want to live in right two and a half million children went there now the military is forbidden from recruiting kids under 18 years old she's created peace zones in in the entire country she's inspired other countries to do the same so you know just leave it ups for the children and she's been went by the time I met her she had been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize seven times so that's my only ordinary person in the suburbs of Bogota right so I can go on or not or not I'm just telling you like you know after meeting these people individually and seeing that raw force I also understood something really important which is you know for me you all became a question of narrative right because if you see human rights or women's rights you know you need a narrative to marry an annual door to practice female genital mutilation or or to impose anything on anyone and that narrative hasn't changed this is what is changing now and we don't know what's gonna happen out of it right but what I can say is that when it comes from people like my only like fatima there is so much emotional wisdom there there's so much experience that the quality that we need to not only change the world for women with the change the world in general which was you know at the beginning I had these mothers you know wondering where they're gonna find hope well I don't have a better answer than these people so now I'm trying for change you know I'm lucky that I can bring this idea to a very big campaign and go but I do exactly the same thing I mean still looking for the male and the female this world and so I'll just show you a couple of examples I have a paper which I know is very forbidden in Ted but I do because I want to quote I want to quote a couple of them first of all I I mean I forgot to cook Fatima now what I do want to write with just a little piece of her book and she says because it's video about that I lit a flame I put my precious burden on my shoulders and I left I couldn't walk in the dark any longer I don't want to live in fear and intimidation God gave me intelligence and faith I am like a book all women are like book which title is their husbands take the time to open the book that's how she starts for book and my Olli says children have a special way of convincing people of the organising reality when children speak of pain and sorrow adults are touched and able to feel their own thing that's why we are the seats that can end the war I mean you understand that we are getting to a point where the children's you know are taking on the you know finishing terminating a war that has been going on for 40 years so I let you like you know reflect upon this but this is what's happening and all of this is thanks to this twelve-year-old emotional father anymore but at the time her best friend died she was so now I'm trying for change so I do exactly the same thing I look for these people and I would just like to feature that a couple of stories because I wanted to show you something that I think is really important is the time that we live in now I think we could all agree that there's more there's so much to be done but as more husband done in the last 20 or 30 years for women than in centuries and you know generation combined right so here's the world we are in and here's the world where you can you know there's a big gap in the two stories that I'm going to show you and in this gap is where we matter is where we can do something right I look for these people and I let them you know I give them a global audience everything matters you know the people that are being helped in Incheon are being helping people all over the world connecting together and I think that this networking that's happening that we're not seeing is it is the force that that might shift the balance not only the balance of gender also the balance of terror and also the balance of you know all the ills that you hear everybody every day on the in the news so this little girl here her name is Ravina here's what she says okay she says I don't know who I am I don't know how I feel I don't know why I was born I don't know who I am getting married to this is my wedding picture I have never met him before in a tradition the girl doesn't see the groom her wishes are unimportant as long as parents agree she just gets sent off with some money and closing so Raveena we don't know how old she is but she's probably around 12 years old seven million seven seven hundred million girls will be married before the age of 18 this year right she's one of them but then in the same generation and in the same time we have someone you'll know because she became a voice I'm sorry Milano and Malala you know what's very much a little Raveena she's a little girl from Pakistan right all of a sudden we gave her a Nobel Peace Prize you know she's become recognized but you are I don't know if you can hear all the voices that are not heard you know beneath her you know behind hers and what's that's what so this feature of Malala was taken two years before she was shot so this this what I'm going to quote from her now comes before anything happened to her to the Taliban she says I'm inspired by my father I hope in the future and myself can become a good influence and inspiration for people before the Taliban's came I wanted to become a doctor to save lives but after living through this I realized that the country needs great politicians so my dreams have changed and you know the rest of the story so this is it this is what I wanted to tell you you know I can only hint at the potential of all these women and why I'm you know not only I'm focusing on her on them but I am also saying you know you are the victims yet you probably are the only one who's gonna get us out of this mess thank you very much