Policy Brief Topic

After consideration over the past couple of days, I have decided to narrow the focus for my policy brief to wellness programs in schools, with a particular emphasis on nutrition.  Historically, this topic has political connections as, for example, the government interjected at the state and national levels to see to it that students where receiving adequate nutrition throughout their school day and would supplement lunches (and breakfasts where available) with free and reduced meals.

I will also seek to reveal the gaps in the education process of wellness programs within school systems as the school systems.  In my own school community, there are several different departments that teach nutritional wellness, including Family-Consumer Science, Health, Physical Education, and the Cafeteria itself has a campaign for wellness...but I am curious what the crossover is.  How often do these departments talk with each other and do their standards and objectives about nutritional wellness align? Are we as a school community, who is governed ultimately by the state and national Board of Education sending mixed messages to America's youth about nutritional wellness? If so, what policies would ameliorate this?

Module 2: Rights Based Approach

    As I began to think about and consider the specific challenges and strengths that I and other women in my community face, I found it interesting that my first reaction was "I feel like there is gender equality".  I take pause and examine this reaction of mine, because the truth of the matter is that, although I may feel that there is gender equality, my baseline for gender equality is recent history where gender inequality was rampant and the social norm.  Women today, in 2013, still only make 77 cents to the dollar that men make in the same or similar fields...this cannot represent equality, in fact mathematically it does not.  

     I also found it interesting that I could not think of any other "challenges" that I face as a woman in my community, and then I thought about what Ife referred to as "structural disadvantage" where people do not necessarily know or understand that they are victims of oppression because it is so interwoven in the structure of society.  I wonder if I as a woman simply accept some of the challenges that I face on a daily basis, not as challenges but as life and "how it is".  Perhaps in the future, I will look back at this as "history" and be able to compare the advancements that our society has made.

    In the summer of 2007, I travelled to Peru and spent the summer volunteering in schools and orphanages.  I speak Spanish, and I was able to gain a great understanding of the culture, especially the gender inequality that is still quite pervasive.  Although no man in the community would come forth and admit that they treat women differently, or poorly (structural disadvantage) there is a dark cloud of machoism that hangs heavy over the society and culture.  Women are expected to cook, clean, and care for the the children.  In conversation with a man one day in Trujillo, a city eight hours north of Lima, told me, "a university education is wasted on a woman if she is going to have children"  meaning that her life would become solely about raising her family and taking care of her children.  

    On a whole, the government and society in Peru is trying to realize a greater good for women.  There are campaigns getting started to raise awareness about feminism and equality rights for women, but like Ife describes, there is going to need to be a shift in thinking for generations and for the society as a whole in order for real change to occur. These social campaigns, are to raise awareness and educate women of their rights as individuals so as to protect themselves.  The Peruvian government has dedicated a special group to women so as to address the issues of gender inequality that are gaining world-wide infamy.  MIMP, which stands for Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables (Ministry for Women and Vulnerable Populations) is responsible for reaching out to the public and creating campaigns, and ultimately policy that will protect the rights of women. 

    In my community, I feel fortunate that such blatant gender inequity is not a problem, or at least I do feel that my rights as an individual woman are protected by the laws that govern our country.  I feel that those laws, however, were not always in place and I am reverent to the women that came before me that worked hard in the name of feminism and equality.  These women, my family members included, acted as agents of change by involving themselves in the process.  It is difficult to recognize that one is or has been made a victim of some wrong-doing.  However, once one realizes that the wrong-doing is going on on a large scale, it is one's duty to empower themselves and future generations in order to ensure that change is created.  

   Women on a whole can act as agents of change every single day.  It is as Ghandi has taught, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  

References

Estado del Peru. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.peru.gob.pe/directorio/pep_directorio_ent_busq.asp

Ife, J. (2008). Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice (rev. edition). Cambridge