The Soul of a Woman

by Isabel Allende

  In 2015 it was estimated that two-thirds of illiterate people in the world are women. Most children without schooling are girls. Women are paid less than men for the same job; occupations that traditionally belong to women, like teaching, caregiving, etc., are poorly paid; and housework is neither valued nor compensated. This is even more irritating nowadays, when women work outside the home to help support a family, and at the end of the day women go home, tired, to take care of children, cook, and clean. We have to change customs and laws.

  We live in an unbalanced world. In some places women enjoy self-determination, at least in theory, while in others they are subject to men’s demands, desires, and whims. In some regions women can’t go out of the house without a male relative for company; they have no voice, no power to decide their destinies or those of their children, no education or proper healthcare, and no income; they don’t participate in public life; they can’t even decide when and whom they will marry.

  By the middle of 2019, we saw in the press the good news that women in Saudi Arabia were finally permitted to drive cars and travel without a male relative. This was achieved after several women from the royal family escaped the kingdom and asked for asylum in foreign countries; they could no longer stand the repression in their nation. However, now that driving and traveling are legally allowed, they have to face anger from the men in their families who don’t agree with the changes. This, in the twenty-first century!

  When I say that I was a feminist at five—and proud to be one—it’s not because I remember it; my mother has told me that it happened on an emotional level, before I could reason. Even then Panchita was worried about her strange daughter. When I was a girl in my grandfather’s house, the men in the family had money, cars, and freedom to come and go anytime they wanted, as well as the authority to make all decisions, even the smallest ones, such as what would appear on the dinner menu. My mother had none of that; she lived off her father’s and older brother’s charity. She also had to protect her reputation. How much of that did I perceive? Enough to suffer for it.

  Dependency was as horrifying to me in childhood as it is today; that’s why by the time I graduated from high school, I planned to work to support myself and help my mother. My grandfather said that whoever pays gives the orders. That was the first axiom I incorporated into my budding feminism.

  * * *

  I will mention my foundation briefly because it’s related to all these issues. (You can look up the work we do at isabelallendefoundation.org.)

  My memoir Paula was published in 1994 to an extraordinary response from readers. Every day, the mail brought letters in many languages from people who felt touched by my daughter’s story. They identified with my bereavement because everybody experiences loss and pain. I had a mountain of mail in crates, some of the letters so beautiful that a couple of years later several European editors published a selection of them.

  The income from the book belonged to my daughter, not to me. I deposited it in a separate account while I figured out what Paula would do with it. I made a decision after that memorable trip to India and created a foundation whose mission is to invest in the power of vulnerable women and girls. That was Paula’s mission during her short life. It was a good decision because thanks to the foundation—which receives a substantial percentage of my income—my daughter is still in the world helping others. You can imagine what this means to me.

  I don’t need to invent the protagonists of my books, those strong and determined women, because I am surrounded by the likes of them. Some have escaped death and suffered terrible trauma; they have lost everything, including their children, and yet they survive. Even more, they rise, and some of them become leaders in their communities. They are proud of the scars on their bodies and the wounds of their souls because those scars and wounds prove their resilience. These women refuse to be treated as victims. They have dignity and courage, they get up and go forward without losing their capacity for love, compassion, and joy. With a little empathy and solidarity they recover and thrive.

  Sometimes I am disheartened. I ask myself whether my foundation’s contribution is but a drop of water in a desert of need. There’s so much to do and our resources are so limited! This is a pernicious doubt because it invites us to wash our hands of the suffering of others. In those moments, Lori, my daughter-in-law, who runs the foundation, reminds me that our impact cannot be measured on a universal scale, it has to be measured case by case. We can’t shrug at problems that seem insurmountable, we have to act. Lori reminds me of those selfless and courageous people who work in very difficult conditions with no other goal than to meet the needs and alleviate the suffering of others. With their example, they force us to exorcise the demon of indifference.

  * * *

  My foundation focuses on health (including reproductive rights), education, economic independence, and protection against violence and exploitation. Since 2016 it has also worked with refugees, especially along the southern border of the United States, where there’s a humanitarian crisis in the form of thousands and thousands of people who have escaped violence in Central America and seek asylum. Women and children suffer the greatest risks. Restrictive measures by the U.S. government have practically eliminated the rights of asylum seekers.

  The argument against migrants is that they burden social services, they take away jobs, and they change the culture, a euphemism to indicate that they are not white. However, it’s a proven fact that when allowed to integrate into the country, immigrants contribute much more than they take.

  There’s a difference between immigrants and refugees. The former decide to move somewhere else to improve their lives. They are usually young and healthy (the elderly stay behind), they try to adapt as soon as possible, they look to the future, and they want to plant roots in the new place. The latter are running for their lives; they are escaping military conflict, persecution, crime, and extreme poverty. Refugees are desperate, they have had to leave behind everything that is familiar to them and seek asylum in another country where they are likely to confront hostility. Half of the seventy million refugees in 2018 were women and children, a figure that has been increasing yearly.

  Refugees live on memories and nostalgia; they have their eyes in the past and they dream of going back home, but the average time they will spend away is between seventeen and twenty-five years. Most will never return; they will always be foreigners. This global crisis, which will be aggravated by new waves of refugees forced to leave their land due to climate change, cannot be solved by building walls. It’s necessary to confront the causes that force people to flee their places of origin.

  You have to understand,

  that no one puts their children in a boat

  unless the water is safer than the land

  no one burns their palms

  under trains

  beneath carriages

  no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

  feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

  means something more than journey.

  no one crawls under fences

  no one wants to be beaten

  pitied

  no one chooses refugee camps

  or strip searches where your

  body is left aching

  or prison,

  because prison is safer

  than a city on fire

  and one prison guard

  in the night

  is better than a truckload

  of men who look like your father

  —“Home” by Warsan Shire

  * * *

  One of the most efficient ways to have a positive impact in the world is by investing in women. In less developed regions, mothers typically spend their income on the family, while men spend only one-third of it on the family. Women spend on fo
od, healthcare, and schooling for their children, while men spend on themselves, either for entertainment or for something that gives them status, like a cellphone or a bike.

  I have learned that with a little help a lot can be achieved. If a woman can make decisions for herself and has some income, the situation in the family improves. If families prosper, the community and, eventually, the country prosper. Thus, the cycle of poverty is broken. The least developed societies are those in which women are submissive. However, this obvious truth is often ignored by both governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Fortunately, this is changing as more women gain political power and resources for philanthropy, which they generally dedicate to women’s projects.

  * * *

  Women need to be connected to one another. According to Adrienne Rich, an American feminist and poet, connections among women are the most feared and potentially most transforming force on the planet. This interesting observation could explain why men are so uncomfortable when women get together. They think we are colluding, and sometimes they are right.

  Since the beginning of time women have gathered at the well, the kitchen, the cradle, and in fields, factories, and homes. They want to share their lives and hear others’ stories. There’s nothing as entertaining as women’s talk, which is almost always intimate and personal. Gossiping is also fun, no point in denying that. Our nightmare is to be excluded and isolated because alone we are vulnerable while together we thrive. However, millions of women live confined, without the freedom or means to move beyond the limited radius of their homes.

  A few years ago, Lori and I visited a small women’s community in Kenya. We had been given rather vague directions, but Lori, who is much more adventurous than I, ordered me to put on a hat and start walking along a trail that snaked through the vegetation. Soon the trail disappeared and we continued blindly for a while. I had the feeling we would be lost forever, but Lori’s motto is that “all roads lead to Rome.” Finally, when I was on the verge of tears, we heard voices. It was an undulating chant of female voices, like waves along the seashore. That was the compass that guided us to Kibisom.

  We arrived at a clearing in the thicket, a large patio with a couple of basic dwellings and something like a barn for cooking, eating, sewing, classes, and crafts. We had come to see Esther Odhiambo, a professional woman who retired after years of work in Nairobi and decided to return to her village near Lake Victoria. There she discovered a real tragedy. Men came and went in a nomadic existence as they looked for work, there was no economic stability, prostitution was rampant, and AIDS had decimated the population, killing a generation of mothers and fathers; only grandparents and children remained. Women died at the same rate as men.

  When Esther arrived there was very little information about the illness and how it was transmitted—the villagers believed it was caused by black magic—and there was no treatment available. She was determined to confront superstition, educate people, and help women, in particular, with her few resources, which included her house.

  Upon our arrival, Lori and I saw children playing, while others did schoolwork, writing with chalk on small slates or drawing numbers and letters with a stick on the ground. Groups of women were cooking, doing laundry, or working at their crafts, which they sold in the market to help support the community.

  We introduced ourselves in English and Esther translated. Seeing that we were foreigners and that we had come from afar, the women gathered around us, offering a bitter red tea. Then they sat in a circle to tell us about their lives, which consisted mainly of work, loss, pain, and love.

  They were widows, abandoned wives, pregnant teenagers, grandmothers in charge of orphaned grandchildren or great-grandchildren. There was also a woman who seemed very old, although she didn’t know her age, who was breastfeeding an infant. Seeing our astonishment, Esther explained to us that it sometimes happens that a grandmother is able to produce milk again because she has to feed a baby. “This lady must be around eighty years old,” she added, though maybe she exaggerated. I have told this story many times and nobody around here believes me, but I saw something similar in a small village in Lake Atitlán, in Guatemala.

  The stories of the Kibisom women were tragic; some of them had lost almost every member of their families to AIDS, but they didn’t seem sad. In that circle any excuse was good enough to laugh, to joke, to tease one another, and to make fun of Lori and me. Esther summarized it in one sentence: “When women are together, they get happy.” In the late afternoon they said goodbye to us, singing. Those ladies sang all the time.

  It’s possible that the small community of Kibisom no longer exists, because this adventure with Lori happened several years ago, but I have never forgotten its lessons. I can easily visualize groups of women like those at Kibisom, women of all races, creeds, and ages, sitting in circles sharing their stories, their struggles and their hopes, crying, laughing, and working together. What a powerful force those circles would create! Millions of connected circles could end the patriarchy. It wouldn’t be bad, would it? We have to give feminine energy—an immense, renewable, and natural resource—a chance.

  * * *

  In the 1960s, when the birth control pill and other contraceptives became available, women’s liberation expanded because finally women could exert control over their bodies and enjoy a satisfactory sexual life without the terror of an unwanted pregnancy. Imagine the opposition of the Catholic Church and Chilean machismo! I assumed then that the end of the patriarchy was inevitable, but we are still far from seeing that happen. We have obtained much, but we still have much to do. Any excuse is good enough to squash our rights, when we have them: war, fundamentalism, dictatorship, economic crisis, catastrophe, etc. In the United States of the twenty-first century, not only is abortion under scrutiny but also female contraception. Of course nobody discusses a man’s right to a vasectomy or condoms.

  My foundation helps finance fertility control clinics and programs, including abortion. This issue is close to my heart because at eighteen I had to help a fifteen-year-old high school student who got pregnant. I will call her Celina because I can’t mention her real name. She came to me because she didn’t dare tell her parents. In her despair she contemplated suicide; that’s how terrible the stigma was then. In Chile abortion was severely punished by law but was widely practiced clandestinely, and still is. Conditions were then, and are today, very dangerous.

  I don’t remember how I got the name of someone who could solve Celina’s problem. We took two buses to reach a modest neighborhood and then walked around for half an hour looking for the address I had written on a piece of paper. Finally, we got to an apartment on the third floor of a brick building similar to a dozen others on the same street. Clothes hung from wires on windows and overflowing garbage cans lined the entrance. A tired-looking woman was waiting for us because I had called her on the phone and given her the name of the person who had referred us. She screamed at a couple of kids who were playing in the living room to go to their room. Obviously the children knew the routine because they left without complaining. In the kitchen a radio blasted the news and commercials.

  The woman asked Celina the date of her last menstruation, made her calculations, and seemed satisfied. She told us she was quick and safe, and for a little more than the original price she would use anesthesia. She placed a plastic tablecloth on the only table in the place, probably the dining table, and ordered Celina to take off her underwear and lie down. She examined her briefly and then placed an IV line in her arm. “I was a nurse, I have experience,” she explained. She added that my job was to inject just enough anesthetic to stun my friend. “Careful, not too much,” she warned me.

  In a few seconds Celina was semiconscious and in less than fifteen minutes there were several bloody rags in a bucket on the floor. I didn’t want to imagine what that intervention would have been like without anesthesia, as is usually th
e case in those circumstances. My hands trembled so much that I don’t know how I managed with the syringe. When it was over, I asked for the bathroom and vomited.

  Minutes later, when Celina woke up, the woman dismissed us without giving her time to recover. She handed Celina a few pills. “Antibiotics. Take one every twelve hours for three days. If you get a fever or start bleeding too much, you will have to go to the hospital, but that’s not going to happen. I am good at this,” she said. She warned us that if we gave anyone her name or address, the consequences for us would be dire.

  * * *

  This experience happened almost sixty years ago and I have not been able to forget it. I have described it in several of my books and I relive it in my nightmares. For Celina and the millions of women who have suffered something similar, I am inflexible in defending reproductive rights. If abortion is legal and practiced under appropriate conditions, it does not have to be as traumatic an experience, as many studies have shown. Women who are not able to get an abortion and are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term suffer more trauma.

  I respect people who reject abortion for religious or other reasons, but it is not acceptable that they impose their view on those who do not share it. Abortion should be an option available to those who need it.

  Contraception should be free and available to girls once they start menstruating. If that were the case, there would be fewer unwanted pregnancies. In reality, contraception is expensive, often requires a prescription, is not always covered by insurance, and can have disagreeable side effects. Also, there’s no guarantee that it will always work.