Ashley Judd, a well-known Hollywood actor and humanitarian, a Board Member of Population Services International (PSI) and a the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

As I arrived into Mumbai, I saw a family near the runway where we landed with pails pulling water out of a filthy ditch, in which the children were also playing. The drive to the hotel hummed with the experience of Mumbai, the largest city in the world, the monochromatic shanty roofs of a million person slum, families living on sidewalks, beggars, many of whom themselves have maimed their children in a desperate attempt to extract money from tourists, hundreds of thousands of matching little taxis, all manner of rickshaws, flowing somewhat miraculously in multiple directions at once, accompanied by a giant symphony of horn honking. They do love to honk their horns in ole Mumbai.

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Prostitution for women is a complex issue that is traced to one fundamental thing: the lack of equality for girls and women, historically and currently. The ongoing sexual objectification of our gender leads to ongoing inequities in education, economic, property, and legal disempowerment, which in turn, of course, keeps women and their children powerlessly stuck in the violence of poverty. For me, the most fundamental expression of this poverty is a woman’s inability to negotiate, much less control, her own sexuality and fertility.

To that end, I work with PSI/India to help reach the most poor and exploited for an immediate health intervention at the most basic level. In addition to helping India curb its HIV emergency, for me, preventing unintended pregnancy is a deeply moral issue of profound implications and urgency. No child should already be living brothels, much less born into them. No child should be food insecure at any time, much less know no other way of life. While we cannot change the living status of these vast numbers of poor overnight (80% of India’s 1 billion live in poverty) we can help women not have more babies that bind them further to destitution, to powerlessness, to pimps and madams. The numbers are huge, so huge. The women are broken, the children doomed.

The overall solution to what I believe is gender apartheid must be balanced and broad; it requires a spiritual revolution that allows girls equal access from early age to education, microfinancing, a redefining of “women’s work,” and universal human rights.

Tomorrow, I am going to the notorious brothel district in the world’s most populous city, Mumbai, where girls and women have absolutely none of the above.

-Ashley Judd”

(Photo credit: Jenny Mayfield)