For those of you familiar with the Hamptons, you can imagine working there during the summer would be torturous. Well, it was awful to serve the rich, but I honestly enjoyed my job! For three straight summers and winters, I worked in the bakery department of a well-known Long Island supermarket where I got to make bread, decorate cakes, whip meringue, and bake muffins, among other tasty treats. It was easy enough, and at the beginning of this past summer I was earning—keep in mind, after two years of employment—$8.25 per hour. After three weeks of broken promises from my manager that my 50 cent raise would be in my next paycheck, I started to voice my outrage to my co-workers. An attractive male new-hire responded in complete innocence, with no intentions of upsetting me: You only make $8.25? I got hired at $9!

Even more disgusted with the situation at work, I went home and did the first thing I thought appropriate: I asked my momma why. She told me not to be surprised; men always get hired at a higher salary than women.

It’s just a fact of life, Ann.

The wrong doings against women in the United States, however, are luxuries compared to other nations around the world. In Pakistan, for example, hundreds of women die each year as a result of an “honor killing,” which is the murder of a woman who is suspected to have had an affair out of wedlock. There have been reports of women getting sentenced to gang rapes for crimes committed by men in her family. To Americans this seems impossible, but these kinds of stories are all too common among women in other areas of the world.

The United States has made clear the desire for the world to join together their call for global women’s rights. Countries that have high amounts of obscene violence towards women, including Pakistan, have been urged to sign on more persistently than others. We need to keep in mind that human rights, for women or men, is a global issue. Even in the U.S., women are not treated as equals; but just because we have a legal right not to be raped in this country doesn’t mean we should settle for lower wages than men or allow these things to happen in other places.

At a recent press conference, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan commented on the consistent badgering of the Bush Administration: “If this issue has to be raised internationally, let’s raise it. We will be part of it. We will be supportive… but never single out Pakistan.” Women aren’t just suffering in other parts of the world. As Americans, we need to step down from the pedestal our government wants us to stand on and look at this as a human rights issue. Whichever color our skin is or whichever set of genitalia we were born with, this shit needs to stop.

But, where do we start? Get yourself in the know. Next week, September 19-23, is Gender Week. The University at Buffalo’s Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (IREWG) will be hosting a plethora of events to celebrate and educate! Winona LaDuke, a Native American author, environmentalist, and past Vice Presidential candidate for the Green Party, will be delivering the keynote address for the week, “Recovering the Sacred: Women Remaking a Devastated World,” at 4 p.m. on September 19 in the Black Box Theatre located in the Centre for the Arts. This is only the kick-off for the week’s events, including lectures delivered by distinguished professors from UB, Yale, and Princeton in addition to two professors from the University of Baroda in India and the University of New South Wales in Australia. Besides lectures ranging in topics from the importance of calcium for women to the culmination of gender and race, there will also be movie screenings, the Cuban Theatre Company’s performance of La Virgin Triste, and poetry readings. With so much going on next week, it would be hard for you not to take advantage of these opportunities. For more information, check out the IREWG website at www.womenandgender.buffalo.edu.

I guess it’s just like what we heard every Saturday morning from the beloved cartoon cast of G.I. Joe: “Knowing is half the battle.” Let’s kick ass!