Postcard to emancipation

A unique campaign to create awareness about women’s rights:

by Anuradha Kodagoda

It’s just a rectangular piece of thin cardboard, innocuous in terms of influence, even fragile if one considers its breakability. But the message it is seeking to deliver is potent – Empowerment. Equality. Emancipation. Rights.... simple words, yet powerful in their import, especially for women, for whom every step forward towards an enlightened world has been akin to breaching a new frontier of male domination.

Little wonder then that round the world 62 million girls don’t have access to education, 1 in 3 women experience gender-based violence in her lifetime and more than 287,000 women, 99 percent of them in developing countries, die from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications every year.

A set of innocuous postcards, albeit with compelling artwork, is not going to change the statistics or how the testosterone driven segment of society views women’s rights overnight. But the message the postcards impart could well lead to a new wave of awareness that could in turn become the beginning of a new era of enlightenment.

In fact, this is what the postcard campaign, austerely named WOMAN, launched in Colombo and several other main cities across the country, recently, hopes to achieve. Initiated by the European Union Delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, in partnership with the High Commission of Canada, embassies of France and Switzerland and Agenda 14, the postcard campaign not only seeks to highlight the societal double standards in the way women are treated but to also mainstream the gender equality campaign through thought provoking art.

Women’s rights

The postcard campaign featuring selected posters from the 2014 ‘Woman’ poster competition, was launched at the post-box near the public library, Colombo 7 with the Ambassador to the European Union, David Daly and the representative from Embassy of Switzerland posting the first postcard. The campaign seeks to create awareness on women’s rights through open campaign in public transports, where travellers are given stamped postcards with a request that they be sent to their family and friends.

The theme of the postcards reflects the role of women in the political, economic and social spheres, namely participation in public life, economic empowerment, women’s rights as human rights and gender based violence all created by the professional and amateur artists who took part in the poster competition.

Anoma Rajakaruna, reputed photographer, award winning tele-filmmaker, leading documentary director and writer, and programme director of the campaign, who has been part of women rights campaigns for many decades, describes the poster campaign as a ‘grassroots effort’ to create awareness of women power and the importance of standing against violence against women.

“This is the second year that we organized the poster competition and exhibition. The participation of the professional and amateur artists was quite impressive,” she says, adding that there were many participants from the North and the East for this year’s competition.

The competition was held under two age groups - under 18 and above. And it had been quite special for because of the higher number of male participation. “And they talked about women rights in a quite sensible manner.” The highlight of this year’s poster competition for Anoma is the youngest winner, who is only nine years old.

Few of the posters from this year’s competition had also been chosen for the ongoing postcard campaign. Anoma describes the use of these posters as a wake-up call, and is hopeful the message would travel far, literally and figuratively, as the campaign is not restricted to the main cities, but will be spread across the country.

Resistance to feminism or women rights campaigns is nothing new in the Sri Lankan society, but women’s rights movements in its current form has however, gained prominence in recent years, especially with the rise of social media discussion forums where like-minded people have congregated to push back against what they believe are deeply unfair laws and societal norms that corner women.

As Anoma explains, there had been a noticeable number of posters from children addressing the issue of domestic violence, which she deems an alarming development, as it showcases the increasing incidents of domestic violence and the reaction of the children to this social issue. “This is one of the main areas we wanted to highlight,” she says, explaining that the marriage certificate is not a licence for domestic violence.

Domestic Violence

“It is important to understand and create awareness among the general public that women rights is also as human rights. We must educate our children and adults to stand against domestic violence in their own households. That is the ultimate hope in our campaign and of cause there’s a long way to go in terms of fulfilling the hope,” Anoma elaborates.

Explaining how the campaign works, she says the response has been amazing. “We request random people we meet on the road to write a simple greeting for their loved ones about the importance of standing against violence against women on the stamped postcards. We also request them to spend a few minutes to spread the message about the importance of standing against discrimination of women rights. People really love the idea and there were many volunteers who showed their interest and shared a few minutes of their lives to spread the word,” she says.

Public enthusiasm for the campaign has been welcome, confirming the urgent need to continue creating awareness about women’s rights, empowerment and equality. Understandably, the organizers of the WOMAN postcard campaign are heartened by the initial strong reaction of the general public and response from social media and are hopeful it will spark constructive dialogue in society acknowledging the widespread prevalence of sexism and discrimination against women.