Social
media is a helpful tool to raise awareness about various social issues that
happen all around the world. One such awareness campaign that is going all over
the instagram is the Black and White photo challenge, where the person who is
challenged has to put a black and white photo of them on the social media
platform with the hash tags #blackandwhitephotochallenge and #challenge
accepted. More than 53,00,000 people have participated in this challenge and
posted their photos. Women, including the celebrities, are posting their
pictures as a sign of women empowerment.
The
challenge is said have began in Turkey where there was a sudden spike in gender
based violence, along with nearly 474 murders of women in a society that has
already normalized honor killings and domestic violence; not just at the hands
of partners or husbands but also from the male members of the family.
In an
article is was said that, ‘what is now a light hearted expression of female
solidarity was originally, in Turkey, a campaign inspired by both the soaring
rates of violence against women and the brutal murder of a 27 year old student
named Pinar Gultekin. Turkish women wake up every day and see a black and white
photo of women who has been murdered, either on their instagram feed or their newspapers
or television. This challenge was thus started as a way for women to raise
their voices and to stand in solidarity with the women we have lost.
The
Turkish government has failed its women, so they need to take this matter in
their own hands to create awareness. In 2011, the Istanbul convention on
preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence was
signed by a number of European countries however, the Turkish government is now
backing out of this. Thus we need to back the power and use our voices or
whatever small or big privilege we have and effectively use the challenge to
raise our voices to create awareness about gender based violence.
