There are two ways to fight a battle like ours. One is to whisper in the ear of the masses, try subtlety and gradually to change the gender expectations and mythic structures of our culture. That’s me.

The other is to step up and confront the thousands of atrocities that are taking place around the world on an immediate, one-by-one basis. That’s a great deal harder, and that’s Equality Now.

It’s not about politics; it’s about basic human decency.

— Joss Whedon

Equality Now

Equality Now‘s mission is focused on these facts:  every day, women and girls around the world face violence and discrimination. Sexual exploitation, harmful cultural practices and systemic inequalities violate their human rights and prevent them from reaching their potential. This kind of inequality is bad for everyone, not just for women: research shows that where women and girls are treated unfairly, there is more societal conflict and less economic stability.

Equality Now works to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world. Their strategy is focused on: Using the law: Create it. Change it. Implement it.

A country’s laws set the tone for how it treats its people, and how its people treat each other. When women and girls have fewer rights than men and boys, violence and discrimination are legitimized and ignored.

Equality Now was founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and mobilizes international action to support their efforts to stop these human rights abuses.

Through its Take Action campaign Equality Now distributes information about human rights violations, takes action to protest these violations, and brings public attention to human rights violations against women.

For more information about Equality Now, please visit the website: Equality Now.

Why Equality Now?

We’ll let Joss tell you why Equality Now is so important…

On the Road to Equality: Honoring Men on the Front Lines (May 15, 2006)

Joss Whedon brought one of Equality Now’s issues to the forefront of fandom in 2007, posting on Whedonesque.com, “Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death”, about the brutal and senseless death of a young woman named Du’a Khalil.

Exerpt:

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

This post inspired a blog “I am Du’a Khalil”. He further inspired Nothing But Red, a project started to write an anthology of “responses” to Du’a Khalil Aswad’s death and issues inspired by Joss’s essay on Whedonesque.

“ . . . I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.” —Joss Whedon

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Other Worthy Causes

While the majority of profits from a screening go to Equality Now, organizers can choose to donate up to 25% to other charities of their choice. Many choose to give to local charities or other global charities that have special meaning to Browncoats.