One Year On, #MeToo Reverberates Around the Globe

More than a year after Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace, the #MeToo movement is still reverberating around the world.

The #MeToo movement has fallen somewhat out of U.S. headlines, replaced with border battles, trade wars and Brexit’s stagger to the finish line. But the message that sexism is not okay and that speaking out can make a difference isn't done leaving its mark. From Kyrgyzstan to Malaysia, this OZY original series has sought out women who are working to change all kinds of industries and environments, and shine a light on communities that need #MeToo and haven’t yet seen big changes.

From Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, Pakistan to Bangladesh, ride-sharing apps catering specifically to women are emerging — and growing fast.

New Delhi–based Shailja Mittal had hired a cab driver to take her 11-year-old daughter to school. But one day, when he didn’t show up and sent another man instead, the mother in her decided to take charge. The city routinely ranks in polls as among the most unsafe in the world for women, and a worried Mittal drove her daughter to school herself. But she didn’t stop there. The incident sowed the seeds for Koala Kabs, a ride-hailing service the 34-year-old launched in June 2017, with an entirely female team of drivers catering only to female passengers.

The startup is among a fast-growing series of ride-sharing services across Asia that are either emerging or reshaping themselves to offer safe travel options to women as they increasingly step out of homes into public spaces that are often still unsafe for them. For some, it’s an act of resistance coinciding with the consciousness of the #MeToo era. For others, there’s the economic incentive of an untapped market, as even the most conservative societies like Saudi Arabia gradually give women more rights.

Gazbubu Babaiarova, who lived through a kidnapping herself, is fighting to end her country’s outdated tradition.

With a bottle of vodka in hand, a Kyrgyzstani mother declares in earnest that they’ll be kidnapping a bride-to-be for her son in an hour or two. “We need her in the field,” she tells filmmaker Petr Lom, looking straight on. “The car is at the gate.” And so begins a bizarre scenario in which Lom gets a front-row seat to the big day, a kidnapping and marriage, and a glimpse at the ominous ever after.

More than a decade later, the 50-minute documentary, called Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, is a crucial tool in Gazbubu Babaiarova’s arsenal in fighting for this so-called Kyrgyz tradition to be recognized as criminal human rights abuse.

In Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, a girl is said to be kidnapped every 40 minutes in the practice called kyz ala kachuu. A man organizes a kidnapping of a girl he likes, where she might be taken off the street and bundled into a car, and ultimately forced to marry him.