Blog 3- Women's rights activists stage flash mobs across Germany

Summary:
Written by Carl Nasman on February 17th, 2014, this article discusses a series of protests that were held all over the world focused on the issue of women's rights and gender violence. It discusses India and the fact that there was another brutal rape, along with the new legislation that will make it harder to punish violence offenders in Afghanistan. There was also a proposed law in Madrid that would limit access to abortion that many women protested. The article was written about a specific protest that spread to Germany entitled "One Billion Rising" which discusses the fact that one in three women will be beaten or raped during their lifetime. To raise awareness of this program, hundreds of women staged a flash mob where they turned Rudolfplatz Square into a dance floor. There were also speakers from Egypt, India, and Afghanistan, and those who made it known that violence is happening around the world against women that needs to be stopped. Germany, even though they are at the top of the world in terms of gender inequality, there is still a large gap in the corporate world, with women holding only 4% of boardroom positions. Germany also has high numbers of sexual assault cases it being the 5th highest rate in the world. The protestors hope that the protest will raise awareness of the issues at hand and make it known that sexual violence is not acceptable.

Analysis:
These particular women's rights activists were protesting the issue of sexual violence in Germany in this particular article but sexual violence is an issue around the whole world. I enjoyed this article and I believe that this was a cause that was worth fighting for. I do think that the article could have been a little more detail as to the corporate gap between men and women because I think that is an issue that is very prominent and that will correlate with the sexual and physical violence that exists in society. When there is a societal understanding that men are superior to women, the men tend to believe that they are superior in all things and that women are on earth for the support of men. This leads to bigger issues, such as sexual and physical violence within the home, and in public places. The protestors in this story stood up against this issue, and most of them were women. It even says that "a few men" showed up to protest, but the majority of the people that were standing up against this issue. The writer emphasizes this because, in the male-dominated society that is obviously in question here, the men are probably not feminists and do not believe that there is a problem with the abuse that is happening- they may not even be calling it "abuse." Nasman also states, more than once, that "abuse happens in Germany too." I thought this was interesting because obviously there is abuse all over the world, and I wondered why he kept saying "in Germany as well," as if people assume that nothing bad happens in Germany. Yes, they may have more gender equality than other countries in the world, but there is always going to be male dominance in cultures where men and women are not treated equally in the workplace or in society in general. The purpose of doing this flash mob was to raise awareness of this issue, and doing something in the public eye like that is very important in trying to get the point across to a lot of people in a very short amount of time.

http://www.dw.de/womens-rights-activists-stage-flash-mobs-across-germany/a-17436887