March is the month of honoring women around the world. It marks the celebration of International Women’s Day and the convening at the United Nations of the Commission on the Status of Women. The purpose of the Commission is to explore successes and failures in “the global effort to ensure gender equality and women’s empowerment.”
Decades ago, Freud raised the question: “What do women really want?” (He apparently never found the answer.) However, he was not the first man to be challenged by the question. In the tales of Camelot, King Arthur life was threatened by his enemy Sir Gromer if he could not answer the question: “What do women desire above all else?” King Arthur was convinced that “it must be a foolish riddle that no one can answer!” Luckily for Arthur, his nephew Gawain took on the challenge of finding the answer and saving his uncle’s life. However, in order to do so he had to agree to marry the ugly hag, Ragnell (who it turned out, of course, was a beautiful maiden under a curse). The curse could only be lifted when Gawain not only discovered but also lived the answer to the question. And what was the answer that saved Arthur’s life and released Ragnell from the curse? It was one that all women and girls throughout the world know: “What a woman desires above all else is the power of sovereignty, the right to exercise her own will and make choices for her life.”
Each of the seven women whose stories are told in Once Upon a Time There Was a Little Girl had to face the reality of the early loss of her personal power and reclaim her right to make choices for her own life. We are not empowered if we are living out someone else’s goals or will for us. As a woman how do you honestly assess the areas of your life where you may be caught in living out what others determine to be “good for you?” As a man, how do you encourage the women in your life to declare their own desires and make healthy decisions for themselves?
Unless each of us as women (and men) honestly addresses the reality of our own empowerment, global initiatives will never be realized.