Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. The famous words of country singer Tammy Wynette ring all too true in the world in which we live. Although Wynette’s advice is to stand by your man, I have to question how that really eases the pain of womanhood for women around the world.

Just last week, I received an email requesting my signature on a petition to save the life of Amina Lawal, a Northern Nigerian woman who has been sentenced to death for adultery. Lawal’s heart-wrenching story led me and many others to sign the petition, rallying against a sentence that seems inhumane and outrageous. The more I have learned about her story the more shocking it seems.

The 30 year-old woman, who has been married and divorced twice, was convicted of adultery after she became pregnant when she was not married. Pregnancy without being married is a crime that is punishable by death-death by stoning to be exact.

The procedure calls for her to be buried up to her neck in a pit and then for stones to be thrown at her head until she dies. Of course, only men can throw the stones at her head. Lucky them. Ironically, if she was never married and became pregnant she could be convicted for fornication, for which the sentence is only 100 lashes. Did I say only? Well, better than death.

What is even more perplexing about this situation is that the man who impregnated Lawal is not going to be killed. According to law, if a man is to be convicted of adultery, he must either confess or 4 other men must testify that they witnessed the adultery. Like that would ever happen! In other words, the man is free, while the obviously pregnant woman who cannot deny what happened, is stuck to suffer the repercussions.

It’s fair to note that although this is an interpretation of Islamic law, there are Muslims who do not believe this to be a true representation of the Quran. Even the Nigerian federal government backs basic human rights, according to their 1999 constitution, and does not necessarily support this ruling.

However, according to Amnesty International’s website, Nigeria’s federal government does support individual states and their laws, including Katsina, the state in which Lawal has been convicted. So although the federal government does not support these actions, they are turning their heads and allowing the state to impose its inhumane laws.

The notion has been posed that people who do not live in that particular part of the world, or who do not believe in Islamic law, are not in a position to judge the way they do things. It’s ethnocentrism when you act, think or believe that your own culture is the RIGHT one and others are WRONG. I question though, whether this incident, and similar ones fall under the ethnocentric umbrella. If someone is being treated unfairly anywhere in the world, it is the responsibility of every other human being to speak out against it. It is not enough to say that it is a different culture or religion and turn our heads. Human rights are basic to everyone, no matter the culture and especially the sex. This acceptance of the mistreatment of women under the disguise of religion is bogus and should be obliterated.

Lawal, by the way has had her baby. She had a daughter.