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Día internacional de la mujer, equidad y medio ambiente

Hoy conmemoramos el Día Internacional de la Mujer, una ocasión importante y un excelente momento para reflexionar sobre la trascendencia de la mujer en el cuidado de nuestro medio ambiente.

La evidencia empírica ha demostrado una y otra vez que la igualdad de géneros, puede traer beneficios profundos en los ámbitos social, económico y ambiental. Estudios de las Naciones Unidas revelan que existe una alta correlación entre medio ambiente y género: cuando la desigualdad es alta, existe al mismo tiempo deforestación y polución ambiental entre otros. Por el contrario, en sociedades en que existe mayor equidad entre géneros, el cuidado ambiental es mayor.

Las mujeres son agentes activos en la conservación y restauración de recursos naturales. Debido a sus responsabilidades proveyendo para el hogar y como ingreso familiar, las mujeres, sobretodo en áreas rurales y en países menos desarrollados, dependen directamente de la continuidad y calidad de recursos naturales, que son cuidados y restaurados de manera constante. Esto podemos verlo reflejado no solo en la recolección o cultivo de alimentos, sino también en la provisión de agua, deber que recae en más de un 75% en las mujeres del hogar.

En cuanto al manejo de recursos naturales por parte de la comunidad, existe una creciente evidencia que liga el éxito de estas prácticas, con la existencia de grupos que administran estas áreas compuestos de forma equitativa por hombres y mujeres.

Tomemos este día como una oportunidad para reflexionar en nuestros ambientes laborales y personales. Esforcémonos por lograr la igualdad de géneros y al mismo tiempo protejamos nuestro ambiente y a la naturaleza que nos permite vivir.

 

 

2 thoughts on “Día internacional de la mujer, equidad y medio ambiente

  1. La realidad es que en una sociedad donde la mujer es una victima toda la familia y los chicos sufren tambien. Viviendo en un medio ambiente destruido y sucio con la destruccion de importantes recursos naturales contribuen a malas condiciones para las mujeres y sus responsabilidades a sus bebe, su esposo y otros miembros de su comunidad, especialmente en paises donde el grupo es mas importante que el/la individuo/a. Pero este punto no es completamente cierto porque el papel de la mujer es critica. Y tristemente, cuando el tratamiento hacia las chicas continuan ser pobres es un ciculo viciosa que repeten ad infinitum maneras machismos. En mi opinion, una saludable mujer es una civilisacion satisfecha. La estabilidad del estado es la produccion exitosa de una formidable familia donde existe una fortaleza reinada por una mama con un corazon dedicado sobre todo a su tribu pero igualmente al futuro de su patria.

  2. While technology massively makes it’s way into our humble abodes, the future of the library’s place as a social binder is uncertain. With people riding the wave to equip themselves with the latest gossip supplementing gadgets the value of the time and energy we place into literature, learning and social mingling is threatened by people who are time deprived seeking to consume media in the swiftestmost digestible manner possibly. Yes, whilst one could argue that social media is certainly more social than reading a conventional ‘rag’ with ones brioche and Nutella each morning the act, if undertaken seriously without the nasty antics of some cocky word slinging ‘Keyboard Cowboys’ is still a largely impersonal affair. As we are ever more being lassoed and herded into the cacophonous cattle docks of the wired and wifi madness of the mechanical Mattrix in a suggestively serene corner of our cosmos Libraries are suffering in silence to combat the onslaught of an ideological system which is forcing the traditional way in which we lapped up knowledge into a stampede towards the retreat exit. If you still have an inkling about what I’m waffling on about, let me clarify it for those of you not blessed to have been suckled by the seductive splendours of the literary canon and the bastions that shielded their multiple pages of mind altering and opening opulence. Yes, the book for many eons was the traditional way in which many of us dinosaurs, including yours truly obtained their enlightenment. Tireless and pleasurable ploughing our way through parchment while standing in awe eyes widened at everything we visually put into our memory gas tank. It may or may not have been useful, but it was guaranteably something which might one day even win us a packet of Pringles at one’s Friday Pub Quiz night.But, please, i should not be transforming such Trivia into such a trivial affair. For a great preoccupation is presently sweeping to make the fortresses of our collective universal right to wisdom as dead as a dodo. As we have slid our way into the Millennium, there is a growing fear, at least where i hail from to keep the increasingly irrelevant attitudes toward the library and it’s social significance from becoming obsolete and indeed even extinct. This notion has gone beyond the plausible as the closing of many libraries has enforced my theories rewarding this pressing public problem. Indeed, as we are overwhelmed by the information wave that presently inundates us, far from rejoicing people have shuddered from the existential dilemma of too many books, too little time as they seek to bolster fretful flagging egos. “Who has time to read any more?” stammers an angry class comrade. “There’s just no time for it”. True reading does require a degree of timely investment but I would have thought such an investment would have been more of a labour of love rather than an insufferably arduous sacrifice. While savvy, i looked at my younger acquaintance hoping that not all of his intelligence had been built on You Tube, Wikipedia and pegged together conveniently with the utensils of cut and paste.And yet like desolate tumble weed filled vast plains of arid lifeless deserts of nothingness, libraries are being viewed more and more as wastelands rather than stimulating cognitive nourishing and nurturing oases. The closing of smaller suburban and satellite libraries, the termination of mobile library buses, reduced opening hours, lack of skilled employees and volunteers are heinously frightening concerns for communities fighting to keep their literary temples alive and with a pulse. As councils cut back on the book budget gutting libraries of the key ingredients needed to make a library well what is a library, the municipal strategy seems as radically ridiculous as baking a cake without flour. Unsurprisingly and deeply saddening above all else is the demise of an institute that once like a Greek or Roman bathhouse was at the centre of social importance. While i dare not wish to generalise or bear false witness to the life shifting phenomenon of our decaying devotion towards the dwindling status of our libraries I believe that we as a society should sit up, heed notice and be very very concerned.We have entered an age which while praising knowledge is still contributing to the persecution of the word in its traditional papyrus form. In our electronic ink loving ever rising individualistic, independent and hesitantly social suspicious epoch of burying our heads like ostriches into silicon sand our precious books are suffering on all signs. I say this not only because I’m a passionately prolific collector of books or because i love writing and have a profound respect for those whom write well. Having composed several erudite publications writing can be a rewarding if not an extraordinarily exhausting task. I often am not satisfied with my own words and wonder how many others out there are as dissatisfied with with my accounts as I myself am. However, even when confronted by a heavy, awkward or less favourable work, i try to pay the work as much intellectual and scholarly respect as possible. Even with students essays, i can almost feel the emotions they felt when they encountered charged episodes in literature and society and are asked to diligently discuss. It can be culturally highly enriching and insightful not to mention endlessly entertaining. Either way, words are like a window into the soul of the many authors and scribes whom in my lifetime and in past times, I’m probably unlikely ever to happen upon and meet eye to eye.As a child born into a home of two working class labourers, from a tender age I was taught that books were to be safeguarded. In a country where, due to its distance and geographical isolation, books could be incredibly expensive, owning such items was a status symbol. But mum and dad were not shallow people just trying to buy class. Rather, they wanted for me and my sister to grow and flourish from a privileged right of passage which they had always dreamed of offering to us. Books are a highway towards expanding our educational development. As a young impressionable sentient curious creature, libraries were temples of pleasurable pursuits from my perspective. They were quite simply spiritually charged havens where good things happened and where people congregated in collaborative contentment. It was a sheltered warm well lit grotto where Pensioners could read papers. A tranquil inspiring and silent place where adults could study while children could sit wondrously wide eyed while they were told sublime stories which transported their minds to worlds beyond their own. Libraries, at least based on my recollections of them were bastions of community good will and positive public interactions. The glory of these books lined monasteries is that they help to shift and stir our mind, normally for the best. From my inception, libraries were sacred space of empowerment where inner growth could come into spectacular fruition. The possession of my primary borrowing card was an indication that i had the same authority normally afforded to so many adults to engage equally in a mature social activity. While others bemoaned the lengthy wait towards sitting their first drivers licence, purchasing their first pack of beer or having the right to vote, with nothing but my card i felt as if i honestly held the keys to the Kingdom of communal belonging and acceptance. For like Church, This was a place which welcomed all society regardless of all the other socio economic baggage which often hindered our tolerance towards the”Other”. Unlike the delicate and frail threads that binded that big clunky monstrosity which we call the social network, the rules of the library were simple and non discriminatory, come in, find your self and silently respect the space of the others sharing the communal temple. This appears to be the universal ley of the library pan global. Regardless of whether i was in Christchurch or Kyoto, sliding into past any revolving biblioteques doors granted me the gratification that i was not merely regarded as a responsible trustworthy reliable young adult but also a citizen of the Earth. Books and libraries were a passport to the world and its wealth of wonders. Nevertheless, in an age of the increasing availability and accessibility to knowledge, it still perturbs me when to hear of the devastation be falling libraries and books. Even now cases of book burning never cease to horrify and sadden me. Perhaps because of my veneration towards such palaces the act seems unpardonable, savage and certainly sinful. I speak of book ‘burning’ in both the concrete and symbolic sense as the assault on books and their holding fortresses have taken many shapes and forms in recent times. Naturally, i realise that some books can be highly contentious. The material contained within them can be sociipolitically and ideologically charged and to a degree i can understand the emotional reactions they evoke. But when presented with the question of whether i could actually burn a book I’m steadfastly self assured that i could not be compelled to undertake such a heinous step such as this action.No i would not never not even to a radical ranting piece of prose whose message i strongly fail to concur with and support. So why do I stand where i do when even I’m aware that literature throughout history has instigated such harm and social animosity? Because to harm books means to hurt livelihoods, the lives of writers, designers, publishers and librarians not to mention scholars, students and others involved in research. Because it stifles and kills of the ability for us to give life to characters and fiction which give meaning and inspiration to our lives. To harm books means to harm the community whom depend upon them and the services of others to bring companionship, value and insight into their lives. Because an aggressive attack upon books is an assault upon the collective wisdom of mankind’s shared experiences across time. To erase books from our lives would be like urging the collective memory of mankind to be wiped clean. A tabula rasa of everything that has lead us up to where we are now at this point in time and history. Sure obliterating the bad stuff would seem like bliss, but isn’t it also true that some of our greatest advancements have come from the lessons which we have learnt from our ills? A declaration of war upon words is an aggressive attack upon ideas and as such consequently upon the value we place on liberty, individuality and ultimately free speech. To be contra prose and the written gospel is to be against the idea of Western civilisation and the culturing and refinement of the human ape. Without written language that great human marvel, it is questionable that our evolution would have reached the depths that it has achieved. Pages filled with the thoughts and dreams of our finest thinkers are surely not expendable to the flickering embers of an inferno of ignorance. I have faith in my convictions when i openly decree thatthe ideas and ethics of freedom of thought need to be preserved for the profit of each and every sentient being both present and for coming. For even the obscure ideas of one person may be beneficial to that of another, even when that point is not collectively held or practiced. Disrespect towards the book whether through burnings, library closures, book budget cuts or reduced investment in a diverse selection of literary scope hurts our curiosity to explore and understand the world around us. By closing these avenues off to book lovers, we are effectively killing off swathes of invaluable human history and wisdom. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just as important to know about things that can morally derail us as the things that make us felicitous.Reading broadens our curiosity and inquisitive interest towards other helping tolerance, compassion and respect to prosper while reducing racist bigoted assumptions. Literature provides the next generations with a golden opportunity to Return to Innocence by way of having the chance to save themselves from relearning the mistakes of history and avoiding their ancestors pain de nouveau. Regrettably, less than 3% of our present books are translation from other languages meaning that our shelves are often dominated by the hegemonic Anglo American dribble which drowns out all others voices. Similarly, we hear less and less from offbeat authors as publishing focuses less on diversity and more on the money spinners. The range of book shops are also decreasing along with their stock, generic books which show how boringly consumptive we all have become when it comes to digesting mediocre printed material. The porning of food, design, 50 shades of porn staple of trashy books which we have allowed the print houses to throw upon us as reputable literature. It’s not all bad. But it’s a slap in the face if originality and intellectually stimulating orientation. Sex may be a strong biological driver, but I’m confident there’s more that drives us than memoirs on perversion and degradation. On the same note, there seems to be a fall in the media coverage devoted to waiting and writers in our increasingly televisually shifting landscape. That said, who writes you’re favourite tv shows script? Chances are absolutely certain that they were penned by a writer.Yes, the plausible extinction of the book is unfolding without the need of a good old fashioned book burning bonanza and this is disturbing for all of us. The places which allow us to nurture auto didacticism while belonging with other like minded beings in an intellectual bathhouse of light is something we should all be fighting to protect. They are gyms of our mind, the shops for our cognitive longings and the sanctuaries where we can indulge ourselves in nourishing our spirits through the fleshy gateway that is our brain. A city without its libraries would be as unthinkable as a town without it’s stadium, it’s piazza or its auditorium, even a town without it’s public toilets. These are places which satisfy us in so many ways beyond the intangible. Books promote community, communication and companionship. Once I’ve finished digesting a text i can then pass on the joy or pains of it with you. The final page may have turned but its message lingers perhaps eternally forever secreted in the thoughts and feelings i possess after it has returned back to its appropriate place on the shelf. Maybe it’s an unforgettable character, a message or a plot that imprints itself upon my conscious. Whatever it is will be something that stays with me for potentially a lifetime. It may even be something that becomes a part of your life if i am compelled to share the experience with you. My point is that the consumption of books is something that can be consumed shared and enjoyed multiple times over.The significance of mobile libraries to small satellites, rest and retirement home collections invaluably allow us more deeply to enter into the lives of others and bring comfort when faced with fears such as isolation and the worry we hold towards our own mortality. Fiction can train our imagination to transcend the limits and barriers of our surroundings allowing us to lead more fulfilling lives in spite of possible limitations. Above all else, books give us the knowledge and support to deal with some of the strongest human fears comforting us in our hours of need.Engrossing ourselves in books gives us a profound insight into the human body, mind and spirit. They are an invaluable tool enabling us to learn much about an individual, a group, a culture, a time, or the changing nature of space and place by way of our altering relationships with these environments. Books, like windows, allow us to peer into the human soul and all that’s good and bad about humanity in it’s shapeshifting chameleon form. Like the moral tale of Pinocchio, verse urges us conscientious and considerate sentient beings in the way we compose ourselves socially. Works of high standing if instilled into us can more us all more ethical caring subjects heightening the compassion we direct towards others. Powerful purposeful prose allows us to rationalise our experiences and consider the reasons why we acted the way we did and what lessons we can learn from such affairs. Wondrous wordsmiths permit me to lap up the vast array of human sensibilities in all their glorious and inglorious forms reminding me of the goodness of my lucky plentiful life and the trials and tribulations faced by those less fortunate. They instruct me to be grateful while keeping me humble and steer me away from excessive self berating. Strings of pearl laced sentences reaffirm the difference s and similarities between our commonly linked world’s granting me an appreciation for all those classes, genders, ethnicities and others who do not share my secure social standing. Likewise, i can feel shame that we chosen few generic blessed ones have not undertaken grander steps to shift this tide of injustice and stereotypical discrimination and prejudice. The appreciation of textual medium not only requires deeper mental concentration but is a highly meditational device which carries us away from the at times worrisome world we inhabit into a purer tranquil state of nirvana.The voices of sage scribes can purify and fill us with lucidity and clarify the vision towards following a clearer path of completeness in our life. They are the maps that guide us towards where we wish to be and what we hope to accomplish with our time here on Earth. Reading one book leads us on to want another book and another and another. It is the one addiction that whose insatiability we need not fear contracting. The love for learning and continually evolving is a sacrament of intrigue and curiosity which makes us question more openly steering us far from myopic generalisations.Assimilating Page after page of hallowed scripture in silence leads us away from the cacophony of media society, advertising and consumerist capitalistic lies which often launch unforgiving personal blows against our fragile egos and the sense of security we place in our selves. Books do not throw ads upon us like a television or a radio can and you can close them whenever the urge to do so arises. Even on the supposedly liberal internet we are at the mercy of a corporate mogul onslaught of messages designed to distract us away from the intention to cleanse ourselves from the purge of the social marketing ropers. Reading time should be our time not their intrusion into our happy place. But who honestly has the time to digest books these days when time is such a scarce and fleeting personal commodity? Why should we make time to read in our lives when there is so many other things to do and when we are all suffering from that dreaded modern age plague of FOMO. Because books give you the liberty to be in control of the utopias which each and everyone of us wish to envision. We direct our own fantasies, imagine our own protagonists and find solace in the stage which we bring into being. To choose any other kind of medium is to accept the worlds which others lay out for us. Would we sacrifice our ability to choose what we wish to place on our pizzas? Books allow us to have the metaphorical pizza that pleases each of our palates.It is important that we never forget the monumental great achievements which have been brought about by the power of the quill and the pen. So much of what we take for granted in this day and age started off as a spark in some great thinkers mind. If we were fortunate, these ideas found their way onto parchment. Overtime, the fear of losing this wisdom has been a preoccupying concern for our archivists. So much has been lost and we cannot afford to be the generation that is complacent regarding the preservation of our priceless knowledge. Literature has given us some of the greatest delights in our modern epoch. One just needs to see how J K Rowling has brought so much joy into the lives of so many individuals from so many diverse backgrounds. Indeed for those less imclined book worms out there, books have helped to spur on some of the movies which we simply cannot get enough of. From Lord of the Rings to Divergent to the Hunger Games to the Maze Runner to Twilight, these cinematic giants could never have been if some diligent directive lector had not noted their meritorious potential to convert the texts into visual extravaganza for all. And lastly, lets not forget the economy. Yes, the economy for in my own homeland of New Zealand the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit have helped to reimagine the way in which we market ourselves to the world. The whole idea of nz that is buikt upon the mythication of our land as “Middle Earth” stems from the romantic way in which we like to see ourselves adding a medieval time frame to a land which only saw its first European in 1769. And the Maori made sure he didn’t stick around for long. The books which we base our beliefs upon weren’t even written by a nZder but well i guess dreams are free to each and everyone of it’s beholders.That said, this type of delusion doesn’t appear to be causing anyone to much harm. Certainly, it has been a God sent as far as the New Zealand Tourism board is concerned. I leave the ethics of such literary poaching to your discretion and debate. Before i sign out I encourage you all to reflect on the future of the printed press and the dystopic idea of shelve less libraries. Could you stomach such an apocalyptic sight? In a world where so many are still illiterate and educationally starved I still hold firm to my beliefs that to be literate is a privilege. But, to chose not to read is a serious injustice to such a privilege. A gift which many around the world are still fighting tirelessly to have the right to access.

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