Maine Owl

Guess who made the list

Promises, promises:

President and Mrs. Bush Celebrate Women's History Month and International Women's Day
March 7, 2006 - The East Room

President Bush: In the last four years, we have also seen women make great strides in Afghanistan and Iraq -- countries where just a few years ago women were denied basic rights and were brutalized by tyrants. Today in Afghanistan, girls are attending school. That speaks well for Afghanistan's future. Women hold about 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. Nobody could have dreamed that was possible five years ago. In last fall's elections, about 40 percent of the voters were women. In Iraq, women are voting in large numbers, and when the new Iraqi parliament takes office, women will hold about one-quarter of the seats.

Looks like something is sorely lacking in the follow-up to these developments, because, according U.N. Human Development Report data assembled by the Toronto Star, "In spite of real progress around the globe, the bedrock problems that have dogged women for centuries remain."

Ten worst countries for women
Toronto Star - Olivia Ward - Foreign Affairs Reporter - Mar 08, 2008

The image of the 21st century woman is confident, prosperous, glowing with health and beauty.

But for many of the 3.3 billion female occupants of our planet, the perks of the cyber age never arrived. As International Women's Day is celebrated today, they continue to feel the age-old lash of violence, repression, isolation, enforced ignorance and discrimination.

Here's how things are going at the two principle U.S. demonstration projects:

• Afghanistan: The average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males.
• Iraq: The U.S.-led invasion to "liberate" Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls. The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are unable to earn enough to eat.

The U.S. itself has a lot of work to do. It's not one of the worst, but neither is it in the top ten.

Update: I realized my headline for this item was ungrammatical. Even though no one seemed bothered, I changed it.