One Woman's Formula for Change

by Lynn Sherr Info

Lynn Sherr is a former ABC News correspondent, author of Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words and Tall Blondes, a book about giraffes. She is also co-editor of Peter Jennings: A Reporter's Life. Her most recent book, a memoir—Outside the Box: My Unscripted Life of Love, Loss and Television News—is out in paperback.

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Mychele Daniau, AFP / Getty Images Zainab Salbi, who’s presenting a program at The Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit, has helped thousands of war survivors through Women for Women International. She shares her key to female empowerment with Lynn Sherr—and explains why the movement is gaining so much momentum now.

If you want to understand what motivates Zainab Salbi to spend her own life seeking a better one for others, listen to her description of her childhood home in Baghdad—then and now.

“In front there was a library, with trees surrounding it,” Salbi, who’s presenting a program at The Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit on Saturday, tells me wistfully. “A huge garden, gardenias growing; inside, two bars. My parents liked to entertain. Last December I visited: It had been turned into an execution center, then a brothel, then the army took it over as a base. The library is now a mosque. The trees have been replaced with concrete walls. The beautiful garden is completely bare except for one persimmon tree that has no leaves. Instead of bars, there are religious flags. Another family lives there now. The girl that lives in my room—her name is Zainab also—wears a head scarf.”

“The formula for change is not simply giving women more money. And education is very important, but without economic power, it’s very frustrating. So we need them both.”

Salbi grew up there during the eight-year long Iran-Iraq War, a terrifying time when bombs fell in the streets and houses exploded. Her father was Saddam Hussein’s pilot, but she saw firsthand the public executions and the injustice toward her schoolmates’ families. Her mother was “a free spirit trapped in a relationship with one of the most oppressive dictators. She was our foundation,” she says. “In the middle of an air raid, so we wouldn’t be traumatized, she created puppet shows by candlelight, sent us to school every day so we’d have a sense of normal life.”

Her mother was like so many women, says Salbi, “who keep life going despite their circumstances.” She is one of the reasons Salbi co-founded and runs Women for Women International, which has helped more than 150,000 female survivors of wars around the world.

“Our focus is on the combination of economic access and education for women,” she says. “The formula for change is not simply giving women more money. And education is very important, but without economic power, it’s very frustrating. So we need them both.”

Salbi tells the story of a woman she recently met in Iraq: “Her husband is raping her daughter. So she stays awake all night—they are living in one room—to make sure she is safe. I ask why she doesn’t leave. She says, ‘I don’t know where to go. I don’t have money or family.’ This is what makes me believe, Oh my God, we need to give that woman sustainable economic power so she can leave.”

Women for Women International has been honored by President Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, among many others. Salbi herself has become one of the new faces of feminism. I ask why the movement seems to be coalescing now—why, after decades in which many of us agitated and educated and broadcast the issues, does the focus on women seem to be gaining new strength today?

“I think the first reason is violence,” she says. “For the first time in history, we have rape survivors in war zones speaking out. In World War II, 900,000 German women were raped, but no one talked. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women were raped, and no one talked. But the women of Bosnia talked, and that was a turning point. They broke their silence.”