©Elodie Castillo

It seems that motherhood is a problem : « women have children and the man can only recognize them ». So, in order to obtain his part of the control, the man creates marriage and a series of traditions based on the notions of obedience and property. However, the world did not always work this way. And another change is due.

From Goddess Earth to Bull’s balls

Once upon a time, from times immemorial, there was a world in perfect harmony with nature in which lived men who dealt with livestock farming or agriculture and women who took care of the first family cohesions. A world in which, it was natural that the mother, this Goddess Earth, provides for the survival of the species. A world in which motherhood was the only indestructible thing.
Yes but, since Neolithic Age – 10 000 years before Christ – when men have been able to observe the evolution of the small seeds thanks to the climatic change, obscure concepts such has masturbation and sperm has appeared. The man, this penetrating being, took conscience of the preciousness, of the seriousness of fatherhood. Since Neolithic, we are living in a world of men in which women, the mother and Goddess Earth, is only raised as incompetent.

The cycle of Death

In this world forgetting about the cycle of nature, women die, women are relegated to difficult tasks, women are pushed aside from the educational and health systems. Women, that men now want to control, only have the right to poverty.
« Maternal mortality is the consequence of the cycle of damages to human rights – deprivation, exclusion, insecurity and impossibility to let your voice be heard – that defines and perpetuates poverty” maintains Amnesty International which released, Wednesday 27 january 2010, a report about maternal mortality in Burkina Faso, as part of its campaign “Dignity”.
This report explains why “ 2783 women die each year following complications linked to their pregnancy or delivery”: the status of women subordinated at home, forced marriages and premature pregnancies; inhuman traditions; no access to health care or educational system.
How to act? Amnesty International suggests direct touch and organizes, from January 28th to February 8th 2010, a trailer of awareness that will travel all over the country to meet populations.

©Elodie Castillo

The genre-trap

Maternal mortality touches all countries. At world scale, a woman dies while giving birth every minute. It is not only about a public health issue, not even about human rights but about the behavioral incoherence towards mankind, towards these women that we destroy under the knocks of violent traditions and genre discriminations.
If the society, today, is to survive, it is time to establish a man-woman balance and to ask ourselves : how can we appropriate again the origin of the world?

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TEXT // Raya B’Dull @rayabi

ILLUSTRATION // Elodie Castillo

TRANSLATION // Lucie Auger @LucieSunshine