Two large families, two distant worlds, two women who break tradition. Thereby hangs a tale.
Beth Osnes is the youngest of 10 children in an American Catholic family. She long assumed that she, too, would have many children. Ultimately, Osnes had two children and adopted a third.
Zinet Mohammed is the oldest of 10 children in a desperately poor family in Ethiopia. Zinet also faced the expectationâplus intense social pressureâto marry young and procreate often.
Zinet refused. She would not marry a wealthy man who sought her hand. She would not have her first baby at 14.
âShe said, âNo, I will not participate in this cycle of keeping women down,â observes Osnes, a ŔÖ˛Ľ´ŤĂ˝ assistant professor of theater and dance.
The contrasting lives and comparable choices of Osnes and Zinet are threads woven into a human tapestry in a new film, âMother: Caring Our Way Out of the Population Dilemma,â which premiered at the Boulder International Film Festival at the in February.
Being a part of the movie âreally changed me,â Osnes notes. âIf women are given ownership of their own bodies, they will have only the number of babies their bodies can handle and that they can care for.â Without help, a woman cannot overcome the coercive traditions that have tried to control her reproduction, she says. âItâs too much.â
And the need to resist procreation pressure has never been greater, the film contends. Population was once high on the worldâs agenda, dominating the first Earth Day and the subject of best-selling books like âThe Population Bomb.â Nonetheless, world population has nearly doubled since the 1960s.
Some 3 billion more of us are alive now than when John F. Kennedy was president. Our numbers now approach 7 billion and might reach 9 billion by mid-century.
Today, nearly 1 billion people suffer from chronic hunger. The Green Revolution has fed billions but is limited by rising demand and finite supply of its main ingredientsâoil and water.
The film is grounded in the theories of social scientist Riane Eisler, who contends that overpopulation stems from the glorified dominion of man over nature, child and woman.
To break this pattern, the film suggests, humans must trade a conquering mindset for a nurturing one; mothers are nurturers, Osnes notes. Step one is to raise the status of women worldwide through education and valuing the contributions of women.
In the case of Zinet, radio programming from the Population Media Center âgave her the strengthâ to choose a different path, Osnes says. Zinetâs family lived in a shack with one window. Zinetâs mother had her first child at age 12.
One of Zinetâs nine siblings died of AIDS as a young woman with a three-month-old daughter. That girl is now 7 and has AIDS, and Zinet is her surrogate mother.
Zinetâs father is in his 80s, and her family is one of two he sired. His other family comprises 14 children.
Zinet went to college and is studying to be an accountant. When she learned her sister was dying of AIDS, Zinet came back home. But sheâs still attending college. She also works at a family planning clinic.
Zinetâs father had long been opposed to birth control but now accepts it. In the film, he says Zinet is a hero. One of Zinetâs brothers says he wants to be like her.
âThat was the culmination of the film, the bringing together the human side of our culture and theirs,â Osnes says.
The take-home message is, âWe can change the cultural practices that are not sustainable.â
Besides being a faculty member, Osnes is an activist. She is a founder of a nonprofit group called Mothers Acting Up, which advocates for the worldâs children.
As Osnes puts it, the way to stabilize world populationâand avoid greater human suffering brought on by more demand for scarce recoursesâis to empower women to raise their status.
That is a tall order. But Osnes plays to one of her strengths, the voice she honed in the theatre. Osnes earned her masterâs and doctoral degrees in theatre from CU. A Fulbright Scholar who has just finished a book on Malaysian puppet theatre, Osnes also researches the use of theatre for development and social justice.
Osnes has just completed a two-year âMOTHER tourâ through a partnership between Mothers Acting Up and the Philanthropiece Foundation. She took a Vocal Empowerment Workshop she developed to North American and international locationsĚýusing theatre as a tool for women to empower their own voices to act on their self-identified concerns.
After creating that workshop, Osnes started piloting how to apply this work to clean-energy development for women living in poverty.
Osnes conducts research in Panama and Guatemala using interactive theatre to encourage poor women to speak up for their needs and will go to India in March to continue this research.
âI lead women to declare their most passionate concerns with their full, embodied voice,â Osnes says. Because they are not used to speaking on their own behalf, Osnes helps them rehearse using their voices to act on their concerns, including preparing them to answer criticisms they are likely to encounter.
Whether they are American attorneys or Guatemalan women living in poverty, âWomen really need this,â she adds. As a theatre professor, âI can come in and say if you donât have a voice, itâs harder to participate.â
Working to help women speak on their own behalf is a small component of larger effort to raise the status of women, Osnes notes, adding:
âYou can chart a new course in human history if we chart new roles for women.â
She hopes the film will jump-start a conversation about the empowerment of women. It might. Besides showing at the Boulder International Film Festival, the documentary is also likely to appear on PBS and be shown in public schools.
The film has also drawn philanthropic support. Recently, Osnes screened the film in her home as a fund-raiser, because the filmmakers, Tiroir A Films, needed money for post-production work.
Rebecca Di Domenico, a Boulder resident and friend of Osnes, responded generously. Her own mother, who had spent years working on population issues for the Compton Foundation, had just passed away.
Di Domenico granted the film $10,000 in her motherâs memory.
Osnesâ own change of heart about children stemmed from her husband, who didnât want more than two kids. While in college, he had seen a talk on population by Al Bartlett, the noted CU physics professor who has long crusaded against the population explosion.
Bartlett himself is featured in the film, which won BIFFâs Best Colorado Film Award and a standing ovation from the crowd that viewed the premiere.
Though she once thought a family with two children was âwimpy,â Osnes is glad of her chosen path, which has included adoption and foster parenting. âMy desire to have this huge big nest of a family is realized,â though not as she initially imagined.
Her family includes a large network of friends, neighbors and others, including Zinet.
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