One Billion Rising: how can public dancing end violence against women?

One Billion Rising: how can public dancing end violence against women?

Ahead of Saturday’s worldwide dance demo, Eve Ensler explains why her campaign to raise awareness of violence is so important, sets out what OBR has achieved and hits back at her critics


A One Billion Rising event in Ahmadabad, India. Photograph: Ajit Solanki/AP


At first glance Eve Ensler’s campaign, One Billion Rising, can appear slightly woolly. The idea that women gathering en masse to dance in public could help end violence against women and girls is, to me, fairly sketchy. But with 200 countries taking part, and grassroots organisations and activists coming together worldwide this Saturday, is it time to drop the cynicism and join in?

When I ask Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, what success for One Billion Rising would look like, she does not equivocate: it is no less than ending violence against women and girls, everywhere and forever. The campaign was launched to invite one billion women – the figure represents the one in three women who, the UN says, will be raped and beaten in their lifetime – to take part in mass actions, or “risings”, which can encompass anything from demonstrations to poetry readings (although, yes, dancing and drumming are encouraged) in a spirit of solidarity and resistance.

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Last year, for instance, there were risings in Bangladesh focused on labour rights in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, where more than 1,000 garment workers died; in Hong Kong, thousands joined an event focusing on the plight of domestic workers after a young Indonesian maid, Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, was allegedly abused by her employer.



One Billion Rising in Dhaka, Bangladesh Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images
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Each year, the campaign focuses on a different theme. Last year it was justice, with events taking place outside court rooms and detention centres, as well as town halls and corporations. This year it is revolution, because, says Ensler, if you want to end attacks against women, “it is the system that has to change – from neoliberal capitalism to patriarchy. People are interpreting revolution in different ways – from calls to oust their country’s president to fighting against abuse in the family.


Students take part in an OBR event in Manila, Philippines. Photograph: Dennis M Sabangan/EPA


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http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/feb/13/one-billion-rising-public-dancing-violence-women-eve-ensler