Writer’s Fortnight: Robyne Hayes – The Impact of Culture

Today we heard the third guest speaker for Writer’s Fortnight, Robyne Hayes. Robyne Hayes is a researcher and photographer. Hayes talked to us about women’s rights and mainly, child marriage, and the lack of control that young girls had over themselves, and worryingly, their own body. However, the strength of her argument was determined by the balance of the issues that both men and women face – and how it ultimately depends on what their over-powering culture teaches them. Men have their own “expectations” like working in the field for long hours, whilst women were doing household chores and water collection. Photography is used to engage people about issues and to show them visual affects and changes.

One of the main reasons why child marriage was so common in places like Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ethiopia, was because of the lack of opportunities and most importantly, lack of education. This meant that young girls would have to stay at home, risking the chance of one day being sent off to marry someone around nine years older.

Imagine. Imagine a life where you wake up in the middle of the night contemplating what the next day holds for you, or if it will be the last day you see your family – you can’t right? Because we, individuals part of Generation Z would never even think, yet imagine such a daunting lifestyle.

The norms of cultures in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ethiopia, were so traditional and structurally placed in, that everyone was oblivious to what they were actually doing. They simply did not have resources and opportunities to make change happen.

So to conclude, what I found quite striking was what you could say as the possible dangers of culture and the implications it can have. I am not saying that culture is bad, but in a way in needs to keep evolving for everyone to be more content with themselves and their lifestyle. What I noticed was that, young girls were married off not because of their parents, or the men they were being married to but by their culture and its intertwining, complicated relationship to opportunities – or the lack of them. This is where organisations came to help to provide chances to families, to stop this continuing loop.

Culture defines people or a community advocating a specific culture, and changes in the culture immediately changes how people behave and portray their lives. In a way, culture holds much more power than we think it does and sometimes nuances need to be made to satisfy the people following the culture – and to evolve it for the better.

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One thought on “Writer’s Fortnight: Robyne Hayes – The Impact of Culture”

  1. Really thoughtfully concluded, Ria.

    I agree that the main strength of this talk was Robyne’s balanced, considered treatment of the issues. It seems to have led you to a particularly insightful and important conclusion about culture and just how complicated the circumstances and contexts of any human rights/social justice matters can be.

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