Chapter 11: Gender Equality vs. Sexism

I think as a girl I came to change the social evils that we have in this country. I would like to end the conflict, corruption, discrimination, and social norms [caste] in society. Youth are the pioneers of development of the country.

Dhankuta, 17, f, Nepal

The law should be the same for women and men, like a man can’t enter a mall in Saudi Arabia at night without a woman.

Mohammed, 19, m, Saudi Arabia

More information on the current status of women by country.[i] To help lift women and girls out of poverty, this endnote lists charitable organizations.[ii]

 

Contents: Traditional Sexism, Violence Against Women, Women in India–a Democracy and Future Super Power, Gender roles in a Socialist Country—China, Women in Development Programs, Women in Government, Activism for Gender Equality, Feminism, What Boys Think

I am caged in this corner

full of melancholy and sorrow …

my wings are closed and I cannot fly …

I am an Afghan woman and so must wail.

–Nadia Anjuman was a well-known poet and author, who some say was murdered by her husband–jealous of her success. (See recent photos of Afghan women.[iii])

Traditional Sexism

One person in eight on earth is a female age 10 to 24, but in many places young women can’t vote, inherit land, or go to school. They do the heavy, time-consuming, and unpaid work in rural areas like hauling firewood and water. In the 19^th century, the moral challenge was slavery, in the 20^th it was totalitarianism, and in this century it’s violence against women who suffer from sex trafficking[1] acid attacks on schoolgirls, bride burnings to collect more dowry and gang rape by soldiers and others.[iv]

The world’s greatest unused resource isn’t minerals, it’s uneducated girls and women, point outs out the NY Times reporters who wrote Half the Sky. Because boys are preferred In India and China, more than 1.5 million fewer girls are born each year than statistics would predict,[v] leading to millions of missing women—more than all the men killed in all the wars and genocides of the 20^th century. A study found that 39,000 baby girls die in China because they don’t get the same medical care as their brothers. Even in the most advanced economies, two of three poor adults are women. Women make up 75% of the world’s poorest people. Only 1% of the world’s landowners are women. Over 500,000 women die each year in childbirth, 20% as a result of unsafe abortions. One woman dies in childbirth every minute due to lack of adequate health care. The status of women correlates with child well-being.[vi] Around 15 million adolescent girls give birth every year with higher infant mortality rates than older mothers.[vii] Most of the new HIV infections (6,000 young people every day) are girls in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but teens in the US also lack information about sexual health.[viii]

The editor of the Chinese magazine Rural Women, Xie Lihua experienced bias first hand as the second girl born to her disappointed parents.[ix] Three of four Chinese women still live in the countryside, where traditional customs breed prejudice, domestic violence, and female suicide. “The rural thinking is that it’s a woman’s fault if she is beaten,” Xie said. “She’s not trying hard enough to please her master,” the term for husband. His family had to pay a dowry to buy the new couple household gifts, leading to a belief that a wife is a purchased possession. A saying is marrying a woman is like getting a horse you can ride and beat at will. Xie’s readers are country women who are given names such as Zhaodi (“looking for a little brother”) and Aidi (“loving a little brother.”) Xie says, “I encourage them to follow one simple rule: “You are yours. You are not anybody else’s.”

Traditional roles persist in developed nations too. In the US, leaders still criticize men they dislike for being weak like women. “Girlie men” is a term used throughout the years by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to disparage political opponents. He in turn was accused of being a sissy for not debating an opponent. General Stanley McChrystal who led the war in Afghanistan was quoted in Rolling Stone magazine as saying his “real enemy are the wimps in the White House.”[x] The double standard is found in every country. For example, in 2010, US Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said, “If someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom nor should an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend.” [xi]He didn’t say anything about unmarried sexually active male teachers.

Some girls hold on to the Leave it to Beaver family model popularized in the 1950s.

I want to be a housewife and mother with a 50% job. Kate, 11, f, England

My mom is a lifesaver. Whenever I forget something, she’ll get it even if she is in a meeting. All I want is to have a good husband and good children and give them a good education like my mom has done for me. Elizabeth, 12, f, Belize

[Her future job] Nothing. I’ll marry a rich guy and live happily ever after.

Alex, 15, f, Sweden

I would like to change into a boy. I hate being a girl. Aisha, 17, f, Kenya

Excluded from Education

In a survey by The Global Fund for Women every aid group the organization funded emphasized that education is the engine of change to improve girls’ lives. Not just formal education, but learning how to empower girls economically, involving their mothers in educational programs, and increasing their self-worth. The girls themselves were well aware of systemic sexism; over two-thirds of the 149 girls surveyed said the most difficult thing about being female is cultural oppression against women. A girl said, “Being a female in my community, I feel really low. I have a low status because they see me as a girl who will soon get married.” Girls appreciated learning about their human rights. Once girl said, “I learned a lot about my body, society, that we women are capable and have rights.”[xii] Because of their participation in programs they saw themselves as leaders who can make social change. “Even my father asks why I want to make myself better with education. But our generation, the new generation, especially the female, we want to change the thinking.” Liza, Kabul University student, Afghanistan[xiii]

Because I’ve found a greater difference between urban and village life than urban dwellers in different countries, I wanted to hear from a rural girl. Here’s an interview with an illiterate village girl in northern Pakistan. Hassan interviewed her and translated using my questions. He explains, [1] Mashal is a person who comes to my friend’s house in Peshawar on weekly basis, cleans their home, wash dishes, wash clothes, and cleans up the house. She comes with her little sister. Her parents let her go because that way she earns a few rupees and that’s how they live off. Her father is a labor who works at a construction field, runs cement, stones, etc.

I am 18 and I belong to Tehkal [district]. I have eight siblings including seven sisters and one brother. Two of my sisters are married. We are very poor. My parents had no education. They didn’t go to school or anything, which they regret. My father earns Rs. 50 a day, which is 0.60$ a day and that is when he works from day to night. In my whole day, I am so busy in the household chores and activities that I don’t even get a single moment for me to spend free. If, by chance, I get any, I sit with my sisters and talk. Lie down in bed and do nothing.

Q2: How is your generation different from your parents’?

Ans: Actually our thoughts don’t match. They always stop me and tell me to do a specific thing in a specific way, but I get annoyed and I try to make them understand that I know my work better and I can do it. My uncles (mother’s brothers) are very strict and they try to rule us. They don’t let us go out and try to make sure we stay at home. It’s a small village so for girls to go out very often is not appropriate. Small issues can lead to disasters.

Q3: What are the major problem facing humans today?

Ans: For me, the biggest problem that humans are facing today is poverty. Poor people have no money, no food, no happiness. They can do crimes for money. I’d like to give an example from my life here. Like my very own cousin also was involved in a house robbery that lead him to jail because he would look at his master’s kids who had everything! Cars, cell phones, money, new clothes, everything! This made my cousin do robbery despite the fact that he knew it’s wrong but he couldn’t control his personal desires and went on doing it. He’s in jail today and it’s been 3 years now. He’s young and strong and was the sole earner of the family. His family is having a very hard time living these days. It shouldn’t be this way. I think government should do enough things for the poor on yearly basis so that we don’t do such crimes.

Q4: What would you do to solve this problem if you had power?

Ans: If I had power, in the other words, if I had money, I will buy food, clothes, shoes and everything for my fellow poor. I will make sure the kids go to school and get good education. I wish Allah gives me enough money so that I help the poor in the whole world. I have seen very difficult times.

Q5: How would your life be different if you were born a boy and how you would like your future to be the same or different from her mother’s?

Ans: If I was a boy, that could have settled everything for me. I would have done everything. I would go out with friends, stay outside, spend time with my buddies, play cricket, have fun, make long distance travels, make phone calls with friends. It would have been awesome. I wouldn’t just stay home, do the household chores everyday, listen to my parents complain about food, work, money, etc. I would get the most attention in the house and people would love me. Being a boy is very cool.

I want my future to be exactly like my mother’s. I love her and respect her so much. She gave me good manners. Today, no one can say that I am a bad girl because of my mother. She brought me up well and that’s why I adore her. So I’d grow up to be like her and take care of our family and live happily.

Q5: What kind of media do you use (radio, TV, Internet, cell phone?)?

Ans: We don’t have a TV or computer in the house. We just have one cell phone in the whole house. I don’t even know how to use it. I just know how to pick up a call by pressing the green button and turn the cell off my pressing the red button. I cannot even send a message. We are not too much into media. We can’t afford too much electricity and that’s why we can’t use it.

Q6: How do you think life would be different if you grew up in a city like Peshawar?

Ans: If I ended up growing in Peshawar, I’d have all the facilities in the world. Life would have been much better. I could easily go out, go to school, have friends and enjoy with them. Won’t worry about doing too much work and listen to my parents complain about food and work. It really annoys me.

Q7: Tell us about the quality of your schooling.

Ans: I never went to school. I don’t know how to read or write. I didn’t even study Quran. Life is meaningless to me.

Q8:  What would you like in a marriage partner? Will your parents arrange your marriage?

Ans: I would like my marriage partner to keep me happy, don’t scold me, agree with what I say, respect my thoughts, my mother-in-law to love me and take care of me. I just want both families to get along well and spend a happy life. I want to take some rest and don’t want more miseries in the world. I want him to be understanding and understand me, my emotions. That’s all!

Yes, my marriage is arranged. My engagement was done last year after Ramadan and Eid. I get married in the next 6 months. The name of my fiancé is Yousaf. I don’t even know how old he is. I just saw him once and that was when his family came to ask for me. I talked to him thrice on phone but never in person. That’s all the interaction I had with him. But my parents did ask me before saying yes and I had no other option than saying yes, so I am happy the way life is. Yousaf’s family wants gold and expensive clothes in the marriage. My parents make Rs. 50 a day. How can we even think of gold? Let’s hope Yousaf understands the situation and make his parents understand and compromise. [Her additional answers to the book questions are in the endnote.[xiv]]

            After reading this interview, I asked if Mashall would like to learn to read. The answer was Yes, but her mother said No, but allows her younger children to come to Hassan’s literacy classes in his home (see photos on Flickr). Hassan explained, “I talked to Mashal’s mother. She said Mashal won’t be able to join the classes because her fiancé doesn’t like her to go out very much. But her sisters would join.” I asked how Mashal felt about this: “She said her mother is right and she can’t come to class, though she so much wants to come but her marriage is more important than learning to read and write.” Because of Mashal, we set up the Open Door Literacy Project with Hassan teaching and me fundraising to pay his salary which goes for his college tuition, for Urdu adult literacy workbooks, and rickshaws to bring students from their villages.[xv]

Here’s a report from teacher Hassan, age 18:

First class went awesome. They learned about 15 pages, writing skill. It was awesome. Mashal’s sister brought her cousin (male) with them as well. So altogether it’s 7 people now. I will do different practices with them so that their writing skills develop. Seems like they can talk in Urdu [in a Pashto speaking area] but don’t know how to write or read it, so my main focus would be that. You can’t even imagine how good it feels once they learn something. Today, I showed them how to write the date as well. It was great! (See photos on Flickr)

Girls are two-thirds of the children who don’t go to school. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, only 17% of girls are in secondary school. In The Way of the Elders about West African traditional customs, the authors explain that the sexes are somewhat segregated, with different initiation ceremonies.[xvi] Co-educational schools can be worrisome to parents of girls, especially if far from home, lacking toilet facilities, and expensive. Women and children usually eat from one bowl and women and children from another. When a woman carries a pot of food and passes a man, she is supposed to touch the pot to the ground. Men avoid menstrual blood. The relationship between woman and man is not as important as that between their families and with their children. The purpose of marriage is to carry on the family’s lineage through the children and the final decision about whether a couple is suitable for marriage rests with the elders. (Once a date is set, dancing parties may occur every night for a month). Some men have multiple wives, which is sometimes harmonious and sometimes difficult.

 “Becky,” a Chinese college student, reports that although China has a legacy of teaching from Chairman Mao that “women hold up half the sky;”

Though the government said boy and girl are equal, there still exist a phenomenon that people like boy and don’t like girl, such as in rural area, parents don’t allow girls to learn more education because they think it’s useless for girls who have high education, they make girls to do work and make boys continue to study.

         Indira Ghale is one of the few college-educated Dalit (outcaste) Nepali women. Dalit women’s literacy rate is only 12%.[xvii] She answered my questions in response to issues raised in Nepali student responses she collected for me. She explained,

Not only my dad, but most of the parents in Nepal, have the belief that educating the girl child is like pouring the water into the sand. I was highly encouraged by my mum and she was my energy to go to the university, as she wants my life not to be like her. Her belief is that only the education will make the change of the people’s mind and the attitude.

         In Nepal, girl children are treated as a second child in the patriarchal society. Because of the traditional culture and values, the people think girls or the women are nothing for them. In Nepal we have the saying that girls do not have to laugh, do not educate the girl, as they have to go with the man one day. According to a UNICEF report, about 5,000-7,000 Nepali girls were sold to India for brothels every year.  If girls die nothing happens. But local organizations such as SAHAYATRI NEPAL are working for women’s rights.

Work

          Globally women work longer hours, get lower pay, and own less property than men. The rate of women’s paid employment outside of farming increases slowly and reached 41% in 2008.[xviii] But in Southern Asia, Northern Africa and Western Asia, only 20% of those employed outside agriculture are women. In Sub-Saharan Africa it’s one third. Highly paid jobs are still dominated by men: Globally, only one in four senior officials or managers are women.[xix] Some women and girls in developing nations spend hours a day just fetching water for their families. For example, a woman who lives in a slum in the capital city of Bangladesh reports,

We spend lots of time bringing water from a hand pump about 20 minutes’ walk away.[xx] You have to queue for at least two hours to get the water. I earn between 500-1000 taka per month and I have to spend about 100 taka on water. At least we are surviving. Our biggest fear is that we get evicted from the slum by the government. Many people get very ill here and I think it all stems from the open latrines. Smell the stench, it’s disgusting. We get fevers, coughs and terrible diarrhea and there are no healthcare facilities that we can use.

         Poverty often leads to cruelty.[xxi] For example, in northwest Thailand parents may sell their 12-year-old daughters into sexual slavery so they can pay for their sons’ school. Worldwide, including the US, girls are sometimes sold into slavery as servants or prostitutes without pay. (A similar practice in Haiti refers to the child servants as restaveks.) A California woman, Olga Murray, set up the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation to change this practice of selling girls. It has given over 3,000 families a pig or goat if they promise not to sell their daughters to be servants, called kamlari.[xxii] The foundation also helps pay for girls’ school fees and provides families with a kerosene lamp. You can read about some of the rescued girls on her website.[xxiii] One of the girls whose father sold her at age six escaped at age 18 with the help of her brother, and a year later, Urmilla Chaudhary became the leader of the largest kamlari resistance movement. She talks on radio programs and goes door to door in villages to talk parents out of selling their daughters. She’s in fifth grade in school now and would like to become a journalist.

Violence Against Women

People feel that a girl is meant to be used—either as a doormat, a maid, a birth-giving machine or as a source of physical pleasure. Something CONCRETE seriously needs to be done to change the current scenario because now a girl does not feel safe even in her own house, let alone the streets.[xxiv] ?, 16, f, India

Normally around 105 boys are born for every 100 girl babies. In India, where millions of baby girls are aborted every year, the result is a ratio of 933 women per 1,000 men. In China, six boy babies are born for every five girls. Parents with money use ultrasound technology to learn gender of the fetus and then abort girls. Poorer parents resort to letting the girl baby’s umbilical cord get infected so she dies or abandoning her—the Indian government set up safe drop spots for these girls as you can see in photos.[xxv] Millions more girls who aren’t aborted don’t get the education and health care given to their brothers.[xxvi] This bias is found in wealthy areas as well as poor ones, such as South Korea, Taiwan, and the nations of the Caucasus such as Armenia. Sons are needed for religious rituals for their ancestors, to inherit land, and to care for their elderly parents as the daughter goes to live with the husband’s family.

The United Nations reports that at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, usually by someone she knows.[xxvii] Violence is a major cause of death and disability for women aged 15 to 44 years, higher than deaths caused by motor vehicle accidents, cancer, and malaria. One in 4 women will experience domestic violence.[xxviii]

Trafficking of girls from my country to India bothers me (Megharaj, 19, m, Nepal). Slavery still occurs today with trafficked women and children kidnapped or sold by poor families to be used in prostitution and domestic labor.[xxix] The International Labor Organization believes that between 700,000 and two million women and children are trafficked across international borders every year, feeding an industry with profits estimated at somewhere between $12 billion and $17 billion per year.[xxx] How many slaves are there in the modern world? Over 12 million people are in forced labor, according to a UN agency, the International Labour Organization, including about 1 million children in Asia. The total number of prostituted children could be as high as 10 million, states the Lancet medical journal.[xxxi] A young Cambodian woman, who was sold into sexual slavery at age 16, escaped and founded an organization called Somaly Mam Foundation—her name.[xxxii] She has saved over 6,000 girls.

Zack Hunter was only 12 when he started a US-based organization called “Loose Change to Loosen Chains.” He wants to end slavery in the world. By age 15 he had written three books for youth activists: Be The Change, Generation Change, and Lose Your Cool. In the third book he asks,

Do you want to be passionate? Do you want to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning? Do you wish you were so excited about a project or a purpose that you had a hard time getting to sleep at night? We might look at Hitler’s story or the Rwandan genocide and be outraged that our grandparents and parents could have allowed these horrors to take place. But we need to stand up and take responsibility for what’s happening today – both in our individual lives and in the world. You can see him on YouTube.[xxxiii]

         When the young Taliban men took over in Afghanistan (1996 to 2001), they ruled that girls and women couldn’t be educated, employed, or walk on the street without a male family member walking with them–leaving widows in a real bind. Violence against women by their husbands wasn’t punished. They also required men to grow a beard. See the movie Osama about an Afghan widow and her daughter living under the Taliban. They disguise her as a boy so they can go out of the house. In his book A Thousand Splendid Suns Haled Hosseini describes the hardships women endured under the Taliban. His book The Kite Runner tells the story from boys’ experience, as portrayed in the movie of the same name. This movie shows prejudice against the Hazara ethnic group by the ruling Pashtuns (the Taliban are Pashtun).

         Even after the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, they’re still bombing girls’ schools and throwing acid at girls who attend school. Under President Hamid Karzai, legislation in 2009 allows a Shiite Muslim husband to withhold financial support if she doesn’t “submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment.” Most women still aren’t educated and depend on their husbands.

Girls are victims of genital cutting,[xxxiv] early marriage (1 in 7 girls in developing countries is married before age 15), early motherhood, and sexual violence and trafficking that also leads to AIDS.[xxxv] In India a bride burning takes place every two hours, and thousands of girls are kidnapped and trafficked into brothels—Asia alone has about one million children working in the sex trade and kept captive like slaves.[xxxvi] According to a 2007 Indian government survey, more than 53% of children in India are subjected to sexual abuse, but most do not report the assaults to anyone. Some Indian lawyers researched crimes against women, suggesting that the total number of such killings are increasing and could be well over 1,000 every year in India,[xxxvii] and even higher in Pakistan. Men and women are organizing to prevent violence against women.[xxxviii].

Each year an estimated 2 million girls undergo some form of genital mutilation where parts of their labia or clitoris are removed. Female genital cutting is practiced in 28 African countries and parts of the Middle East and Asia. An estimated 135 million girls and women have suffered from cutting, according to CARE.[xxxix] “Honor killings” by other family members murder thousands of women in Middle Eastern and South Asian countries who are judged to have violated sexual norms. In the Middle East sexual honor leads to violence–including rape as a way to punish a girl’s family by dishonoring them and honor killings–over 5,000 a year, estimates the UN Population Fund.[xl] Honor killings happen in the US too. An Iraqi immigrant in Arizona ran over his daughter with his car because he felt she’d become too Westernized (October 20, 2009). To escape draconian punishment, Middle Eastern girls who engage in premarital sex and can afford it may have an operation to replace the hymen.

The leading cause of death of teenage girls in developing countries is complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Maternal health is one of the widest gaps between rich and poor countries. The leading causes of maternal mortality in developing nations are hypertension and hemorrhage.[xli] Only one in three rural women in developing regions receive the recommended care during pregnancy and use of contraceptives is very low in Sub-Saharan African and Oceania.

Melinda Gates stated in 2010, “Policymakers in both rich and poor countries have treated women and children, quite frankly, as if they matter less than men. They have squandered opportunities to improve the health of women and babies.”[xlii] To save the 350,000 mothers and 3 million newborns who die every year, the Gates Foundation invested $1.5 billion through 2014. The goal is to bring the problem to the forefront, as the foundation did with malaria and AIDS. Ms. Gates praised UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for designing a global action plan for maternal and child health to help achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. He commented, “We are seeing a global movement for an end to the silent scandal of women dying in childbirth.”

Old customs die slowly: A Russian proverb says, “A beating man is a loving man,” and this practice of wife beating continues. In Afghanistan and some Middle Eastern countries, it’s OK to punish girls and women who supposedly dishonor their families with acid attacks, honor killings, and executions. The Turkish movie Bliss tells the story of a teenage girl who is raped but escapes the honor killing decreed for her.

In India, where uneducated women are expected to obey their fathers then their husbands, some are rebelling against violence and injustice. When Sampat Pal was a little girl in India, her parents wouldn’t let her go to school, so she wrote the alphabet on village walls and floors. They finally did send her to school, but removed her when she was 12 to marry a man 13 years older. A year later she had the first of her five children. At 18, she started meeting with local organizations to work on women’s health issues and fight against child marriage, dowry abuse, and domestic violence. Her husband didn’t like her speaking with men but “He supports me now,” she said. She added, “There used to be a pervasive feeling of helplessness, a collective belief that fighting back is just not possible, but that is slowly changing.”[xliii]

She organized the Gulabi (Pink) Gang in 2006 to help victims of domestic violence. She told her group of women, “To face down men in this part of the world, you have to use force. We function in a man’s world where men make all the rules. Our fight is against injustice.” The group started with a few women and spread to villages throughout the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The women use clubs and bamboo batons to influence wife beaters, rapists, and corrupt government officials to change. One of the members whose husband used to beat her reported he stopped when she joined the gang; “I learned that the more you suffer silently, the more your oppressor will oppress you.”

When a landlord raped a teenage girl, he paid the police not to investigate. The Pink Gang called the police chief and he got on the case. In 2008 the group discovered that a government shop that was supposed to give free grain to the poor was in fact selling it. The pink-clad women stopped the trucks carrying grain to the illegal market by deflating the tires and taking the drivers’ keys. They pressured government officials to get the grain to the poor. Ms. Pal also teaches women job skills such as weaving plates from leaves and sewing. (See endnote for other youth activists in the news. [xliv])

In another pink protest, when Hindu activists criticized a movie star for living with a man without being married and filed criminal suits against her for leading young people astray, the incident outraged thousands of Indian women, who responded in 2010 by collecting as many pairs of pink panties as possible and sending them to the organization behind the attack.

Model programs to reduce violence are found globally. The Guy-to-Guy Project by Instituto Promundo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, organizes young men who live in poor areas to do outreach to other guys with a play about reducing violence against women, provide educational materials, etc. A similar group in Mumbai, India, called Men Against Violence and Abuse teaches young men through street plays, essay and poster competitions, wall newspapers, radio plays, and discussion groups.

Women in India, a Democracy and Future Super Power

            Reeni, a 17-year old female student from India stated, “I want my country to ensure greater safety for women in India. Women should be able to travel and work on their own without worrying about their security. They should get respect and be treated as equals at their workplaces or even while walking on the road or sitting in a bus.[xlv]” An Indian male student, Deepak, 18, said he’d like to do away with “self-immolation,” which still is sometimes performed by young brides and widows and he also mentions the problem of slavery.

A high school girl reports,

Women’s liberation is a myth, considering the worsened condition of the fairer sex in the social setup. Though women have increased their contact with the outer world, have reached the pinnacle of success and are now at par with men in all fields, inside the homes, it is the same old story. It is women who carry out all the household. Men are not bothered at all about the extra load that women carry. Moreover, crimes against women refuse to subside. Rape, harassment, dowry, infanticide–the females have to bear it all. To add to this, the society still feels that ladies are inferior to men; it is still male-dominated society.

Garima, ?, f, India www.rdpschool.com

Since India is a BRIC nation, one of the rising economic superpowers, we need to understand if it will continue in the conservative patriarchal direction practiced by the 80% who live in villages. Or will India pick up on the dedication to equality of some of the educated elite who lives in urban areas—considered decadent and westernized by traditionalists. The three catastrophic issues facing India in this century are population explosion, the AIDS epidemic (over 2.5 million people with HIV) and female genocide—all are sex related.[xlvi] Yet sexuality is a taboo subject, despite the fact that India may overtake China as the most populous nation before 2030. Over half of Indians are under 22, childbearing age.

In Sex and Power, Rita Banerji analyzes this important question in terms of the horrifying treatment of women, which she proves fits the definition of genocide: abortion of girls, female infanticide, child brides (about 65% of girls marry before the legal age of 18), dowry murders (an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 yearly[xlvii]), polyandry where a girl is married to brothers—catching on in areas with a shortage of girls, gang rapes, honor killings, and neglect of girls’ health and education. As a proverb says, raising a daughter is like watering a plant in your neighbor’s yard. A girl is an outsider in her family of origin and her husband’s family. These cruel practices resulted in the elimination of around 50 million women. She adds that, “thousands of women who live in horribly abusive violent marriages in India would get out. Divorce, just like marriage, is a family/community decision–not an individual choice. If they got out, they would face excommunication.”

Ms. Banerji reviews the “yo-yo” history of religion in India from celebrating sexuality to abhorring it to find a precedent for gender equality and a healthy acknowledgement of human sexuality. She found a model in Tantric philosophy, based on equality and balance between female and male, Shakti and Shiva. But in modern times, sex is not discussed; even kissing in movies is unusual and very chaste.

Production of the film Water (2005), about child widows in the 1930s, was shut down in Varanasi by Hindu fundamentalist groups and the state government.[xlviii] Four years later woman director Deepa Mehta completed the film in Shi Lanka and the DVD is available in the West. Poor widow houses still exist. Girls and boys are not supposed to interact, due to the religiosity of conservative people. (Yet at the same time it’s become acceptable for girls to show flesh in beauty pageants, films, and modeling.) She concludes, “Female genocide in India is the psychopathic fallout of the socialized dichotomy of men and women and sex and the sacred, and the inability of Indian society to overcome this schizophrenic vision.”[xlix] The future is bleak because of widespread illiteracy and politicians cater to the majority religious conservatives to get their votes.

Her campaign to bring female genocide to public outrage is explained at www.50millionmissing.in, including a petition to sign. The website includes distressing comments from readers like this one[l]:

I have lost my 24-year, well-educated daughter Anshu Singh, in North East Delhi. She faced dowry death on January 2010 just after 45 days of her marriage. I have great concerns about my rest two daughters. I am in fear how to save them from this cruel world of making crimes on girls. My family is in great trauma since two months. The police are not taking pain to catch the culprits.

         Ms. Banerji informed me in an email in 2010 that “young India refuses to challenge the old ideologies and traditions that have reduced women to the status of trash in this country.” 

,

Within India more than 60% are unaware of the degree of female genocide in India (they know its a lot but they don’t know how many). But when they are informed of the scale they don’t doubt it. They hear about feticides, infanticides and dowry murders on regular enough basis on the news and people talking, so they don’t question the scale of it. But what is worrying is that we don’t see the reactions that we think are necessary to gear a public condemnation or rejection of the practices. So for instance outside India our survey shows responses like horror, shock, anger, etc. But within India we are not seeing these responses. And we feel that we are now dealing with is a widespread and deeply rooted psychosis.

       Here is an interesting article on why women characters must be traditional on TV–taking hardship and abuse subserviently. [li] It says, “The makers of these serials say TV gives as good as it gets–women are usually appreciated by audiences as subservient, overtly loyal and moralistic or evil, conniving and home-breaking characters. Television cannot be about superwomen. It has to be about the average Indian women; otherwise it will lack identification,’ Ekta Kapoor, the creator of India’s most wanted ‘bahus’ [young daughter-in-laws are a popular soap opera story] Tulsi and Parvati, told IANS.

       So yes they respect the older generations–and so customs like dowry, dowry related murders, female feticide and female infanticide perpetuate.  And it gets worse every year. Old India is based on the idea of the patriarchy, which is absolute in its control, and submission of women. The old sayings are “May you be the mother of a hundred sons.”  “Having a daughter is like spitting in your neighbor’s yard.” “A girl leaves her parents house in her wedding palanquin.  It is only her bier that can return.” And so young India refuses to challenge the old ideologies and traditions that have reduced women to the status of trash in this country. 

            For example, one dowry related case that we dealt with in the 50MM campaign involved the murder of a young, highly educated woman who was working for multinational company.  When her in-laws and husband continued to press for more and more money even after the marriage, she began to take out large loans through her company to give them that money. She was killed 45 days after the wedding. The same thing with female feticide. Another case we had–where this young woman doctor, whose husband was also a doctor, was being harassed by her husband and in-laws to abort her twin girls. She was not only a professional but came from a wealthy, upper class, well-educated family.  She did get out, but last year she was trying to return to her husband and in-laws house because she told me, “The children must have a father.”  When her baby was six-months-old the mother-in-law tried to kill her by kicking her down the stairs. She was saved because she was strapped to her cradle. So I asked the mother–how can you think of something like this?  She was financially able and the children were safe and happy. She basically told me, “In our society the children must have a father and we must learn to forgive.” You may want to read the “Democratic” or modern section that I cover in my book Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies. 

Nisha Singhania, senior director of Grey Worldwide India, reports a decade ago, most young women saw themselves as housewives.[lii] Later, most said they wanted to be teachers or doctors. “If they had a profession at all, it had to be a noble cause,” Singhania says. “Now, it is about glamour, money, and fame.” In the past, “As a girl, you never spoke to your parents. They spoke to you.” But today 67% of these young urban women say they plan to take care of their parents into their old age. Many plan to marry when they’re ready, not when their parents want, and 65% believe dating is a necessary preliminary to marriage. “The relationship with the husband used to be one of awe,” Singhania says. “Now, women want a partner and a relationship of equals.” Female role models in Indian culture used to convey perfection, Singhania says. Now, 62% of girls say it’s O.K. if they have faults and that people see them. Watch a short video interview with Indian women business leaders, some of whom inherited their leadership from their fathers.[liii] A business professor explains on the video that the reason for the changes is technology enables more flexible work arrangements and leads to a more gender-neutral business world. Also, the increase of smaller families encourages fathers to pass their businesses to daughters.

                                     Women in Muslim Nations

Pakistan  

Today in a lot of countries like India, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia and even in my own country, girls are given less importance than guys or considered a burden sometimes. Even in really developed areas of those countries girls are less trusted by parents. Part of it is because they are considered the honor of the family, and their respect is considered a respect of the family. And part of it is because parents in these countries give a lot more importance to what society says. Today in these countries, if a girl is raped and loses her respect, the parents who still love her as their child, force her to commit suicide for the fear of what society will say. But society never says anything to that guy who committed rape. If a family has limited resources than their son’s wishes are usually priority.

When we were young we realized in our house we sisters were given more love and rights than our brothers, which was really unusual. But I think my father was born with that kind of heart and when he saw how people hate their daughters or consider them less loveable than sons, mostly because girls increase the burden on poor parents. Their marriage requires a lot more money. And than there is a very wrong tradition of giving money and property to a daughter when she is being married. All these things forced parents to consider their daughter a burden. My father wants for a girl to not to feel herself less capable than boys and less important than boys.

Here our environment is really different. I shouldn’t go out without my dad or my elder brother with me. Society won’t think it right. And society matters a lot here, especially in a small city where I live, it matters a lot more for a girl to go out alone and I don’t want anyone to talk bad about my dad. I have been very depressed about my college plans since I’m not getting very many opportunities to go out and search, being a girl coming in the way.

Sahar, 17, f, Pakistan

 I asked Hassan to film villages near his home in Peshawar. I told him I was surprised that the people on the street, the children playing, were all male except I saw two women in purdah walking down the street. Hassan explained,

I was new to the village. They saw me for the first time with the camera. The women outside quickly went to their homes because they are scared of their men and they know that they are supposed to be inside at such times. We are talking about people who are absolutely confined to their own homes and not go out a lot. I live in Peshawar and we do have some exposure to girls. For example, we have co-education here. Women go out of their homes to markets, interact in schools, colleges, universities, cafes, etc. Villages have different lives than cities.

Saudi Arabia

A college student told me about gender roles in his country:

In Saudi Arabia, the only time girls and boys interact is in pre-school. If you go to friends’ homes, boys don’t eat with girls or play together. Girls might make cookies together, make crafts, or play clapping games, and boys play sports like soccer. Girls cover their hair with hijab—headscarf. When it’s time to get married, my mother or aunt will look for a wife for me. I’d like a tall woman, not fat, from my town, who will be a good mother. My mother quit teaching high school when she had her first son. [Based on my interview] Mohsen, 19, m, Saudi Arabia

            An American journalist who taught young journalists in Saudi Arabia reported on gender relations in his HBO special, My Trip to al-Qaeda.[liv] Lawrence Wright said the men are “nearly incapacitated by longing.” Some young men refer to the burka-clad women as BMO, “black moving objects.” He was “constantly flabbergasted by the lack of understanding between the sexes. I had thought Saudi women would be a force for change, but this was not really true.” There’s no civil society, nothing for young people to do but shop. He said as kind of a joke what civilizes young men is wanting to please girlfriends, but in reality it’s true segregating the sexes leads to deviant behavior and subordination of women.

Afghanistan

Women live in fear in Afghanistan. “I get threatening calls almost every day asking why I think I am important enough to work in an office,” said Fouzia Ahmed, 25, a government secretary in Kabul. “The truth is, no women feel safe here. We are always threatened. That’s why we need the eyes of the world.” When the young Taliban men took over in Afghanistan (1996 to 2001), they ruled that girls and women couldn’t be educated, employed, or walk on the street without a male family member walking with them–leaving widows in a real bind. Violence against women by their husbands wasn’t punished. They also required men to grow a beard.

Traditional Muslim practices keep women subordinate as films illustrate.[lv] Afghan men can’t talk to an unrelated woman unless engaged to her. Segregating the sexes, however, leads to perverted sexuality and pedophilia, as in the Afghan Pashtun practice of bacha baz, young boys kept as lovers by older men. “How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face? We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful,” explained a 29-year-old man.[lvi] A common expression is, “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” Some Muslim feminists point to progressive steps taken by the Prophet on women’s behalf and look to his youngest wife, Ayisaha, whose writings or ahadith are quoted in shar’ia Islamic teachings.

 See the movie Osama about an Afghan widow and her daughter living under the Taliban. They disguise her as a boy so they can go out of the house. In his book A Thousand Splendid Suns Haled Hosseini describes the hardships women endured under the Taliban. His book The Kite Runner tells the story from boys’ experience, as portrayed in the movie of the same name. This movie shows prejudice against the Hazara ethnic group by the ruling Pashtuns (the Taliban are Pashtun).

Even after the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, they’re still bombing girls’ schools and throwing acid at girls who attend school. Under President Hamid Karzai, legislation in 2009 allows a Shiite Muslim husband to withhold financial support if she doesn’t “submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment.” Most women still aren’t educated and depend on their husbands. An Afghan woman is shown on a Time magazine cover, her ears and nose chopped off by her husband’s family because she tried to run away from domestic abuse.[lvii] The local judge, a Taliban commander, allowed it. How can we negotiate with a group who believes women don’t have rights and shouldn’t go to school? (The 18-year-old is currently being sheltered in New York City after having reconstructive surgery on her face.)

An innovative model program to train slum women to earn money was set up as part of an Indian billion-dollar aid program for Afghanistan. The training takes place in a guarded Kabul park where men are not allowed. Women and girls can take off their burqas, play on the swings, and learn organic farming, sewing, and literacy. A 19-year-old girl commented, “This is the one place that’s ours. For us, home is so boring. Our streets and shops are not for women.”[lviii] Half of all girls are married before age 16. By 2009 law, a Shia minority husband can refuse to provide food for his wife if she refuses to have sex with him, a woman must have her husband’s permission to work, and only men have legal custody of their children, as in the 19^th century in the West.[lix]

Over 300 Muslim women protested in the capital of Afghanistan, April, 2009, while being called “Whores,” by some of the men who supported religious restrictions on women’s rights. The women delivered a petition to Parliament to repeal the 2009 law that permits Shiite Muslim husbands to rape their wives, requires a husband’s permission for a woman to go to school or work outside the home, and requires that if a husband wants his wife to dress up or “make herself up” she must obey. President Karzai said these requirements would be repealed after some world leaders criticized the legislation, including Angela Merkel, head of Germany.

Iran

Some fundamentalist Islamic leaders see women as the source of all kinds of trouble, even earthquakes. In 2010, for example, an Iranian cleric who leads prayers in Tehran blamed potential earthquakes on women: Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi explained, “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes.”[lx] A global campaign tried to prevent Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old widow and mother of two, convicted of adultery in Iran, from being stoned to death. In one day alone, 500,000 responded to an Internet call for save her.

A tourist in Iran in 2010, Sheila Collins reported to me about segregation of the sexes,

What surprised me is there is a very close bond of friendship between the boys starting at a young age. You see them everywhere–high school, college–with arms around each other, sometimes holding hands, greeting each other with real warmth and affection. According to our Iranian guide these friendships are so strong they last through adulthood. Perhaps it is because they are segregated from girls from the beginning in school, etc. I was so glad to see young people – boys and girls – sitting on the grass, on benches acting pretty much the way we did when that age. There were no duennas around to keep an eye on them. Cities were less conservative and the young women often made fashion statements out of their Jaballah’s and headscarfs. I hear rumors that things are tightening up because the ayatollahs see creeping western influence. Religion is there, that’s for sure, but many young people seem to be very much making up their own minds. 

Since women led some of the Green Revolution protests, this female activism is called “the lipstick revolution.”[lxi] Women’s rights groups also organized the One Million Signatures Campaign in 2006 to change discriminatory laws against women, such as only husbands have the right to initiate divorce and have custody of their children. Men can be polygamous and have “temporary” marriages to have sex.[lxii] Dozens of women involved in the effort have been harassed, jailed or executed by the government.[lxiii] When Neda Aga-Saltan was killed by a sniper on the street while demonstrating the unfair elections of June, 2009, she became a worldwide symbol of resistance. The video of her death went viral. Other women wore Neda masks and carried signs saying “I am Neda,” as shown in a documentary about her.[lxiv] The regime made a DVD of their version of her death to try to counter its power.

Islamic extremists continue their restrictions on women. In Iran, since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the law mandates that women cover their hair and wear long coats in public. Patrols search the streets of Tehran looking for “loose morality,” meaning signs of modernism like loose-fitting veils, short coats, or being too suntanned. The interior minister developed a “chastity plan” to promote the proper covering from kindergarten on up. An expatriated Iranian writes graphic novels about growing up under the extremists: You can view some of her drawings on YouTube.[lxv] I asked Hassan why don’t men have to cover up to avoid igniting fires of passion in women? Hassan, replied, “HA HA I agree with you. This is stupid to say that men can’t control their emotions!”

Somalia

Somali writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali described in her evolution away from her Muslim beliefs in her book Infidel.[lxvi] She tells us Mohammad consummated his marriage with his young wife Ayisha when she was only nine and playing with dolls, although some Muslims say she was older.[lxvii] Ayaan was raised in her early childhood in tribal society in Somalia where her illiterate grandmother was a nomad, married against her will at age 13. The family would pack their mats onto camels and move to another place every month or so to find more water and pasture. They believed not only in Allah, but also the influence of Djinns (spirits) and ancestors. Loyalty to one’s clan was all-important. (Later, in Kenya, she observed increasing reliance on tribal affiliation and religious tradition as the government fell apart due to corruption.)

Her grandmother insisted she and her sister suffer genital cutting and the resulting pain of their future husbands breaking through the scar tissue on the wedding night without foreplay or any sex education from parents. Otherwise girls would be considered dirty, not pure and unmarriageable. A woman is supposed to be baarri, a pious slave who submits to her father, then her husband. Submission is the message girls and women get. They can’t go outside without their father’s permission and are taken from school and married off when they’re girls. Her father was a political leader who moved the family to Saudi Arabia where Ms. Ali saw her first toy at age eight. She heard the word haram—forbidden–every day. Boys and girls playing together was haram, as was taking a bus with men, or having a headscarf fall off even with no males around. The Saudi boys were in charge at home, telling their mothers and sisters what to do.

(To update haram, in 2010, religious police tried to punish three young people who appeared on an MTV show for “openly declaring sin.” On the show, one of the youths said,  “We are not free to live as we like.” The episode showed how Aziz tries to meet his girlfriend for a date, unacceptable in the kingdom. “I feel great solace when I talk to her,” he said in his declaration of sin. In the same year, four women and 11 men were sentenced to flogging and prison terms for mingling at a party in the northern town of Ha’il.)

Ms. Ali’s family moved to Nairobi in 1980. In her Muslim Girls’ School, which followed British system with O level exams at the end of year 11 and A levels in year 13, some of the teachers hit the students when they made mistakes. A devout teacher warned them to beware of Western decadence: “the corrupt, licentious, perverted, idolatrous, money-grubbing, soulless countries of Europe.” However, once she learned to read English she started reading western novels she got from the library, where girls and boys were equal, like Harlequin romance novels, European fairy tales, Nancy Drew the girl detective, the adventures of Enid Blighton, the Secret Seven, and the Famous Five. In literature class they read novels like 1984, Huckleberry Finn, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and Cry, the Beloved Country.

The novels countered the traditional belief that love and sex were lowly and that love marriages were a stupid mistake that forfeited your clan’s protection if your husband left you. Without a clan protector, a girl could be raped and left to die without honor. Another example of western culture was her brother listened to “devil music” tapes of Michael Jackson that his mother threw out the window.  When they visited family back in Mogadishu, Somalia, they watched Indian movies and Arab soap operas on TV.

After Nairobi, she ended up in living in the Netherlands. Her father agreed to marry her to a Canadian Somali without consulting her, just as he took another wife without telling her mother. When her plane landed in Frankfort she decided not to continue her flight to Canada to join her new fiancé. She took the train to the Netherlands and applied for refugee status. She worked as a translator, got into an excellent university to study political science, and was elected to parliament. She was critical of funding Muslim schools where children weren’t encouraged to ask questions and told not to be friends with unbelievers. Although she considers herself Dutch, she and her guards are now in the US because of extremist Muslim immigrants’ threats to her life due to her criticism of the Islamic treatment of women and children. Her partner in a film about this topic, Submission, was killed by an extremist so Dutch authorities took threats to kill her seriously. (As an update, in the Dutch election of 2010, the anti-Islam party called the Freedom Party did its best finish with 24 seats out of 150 parliamentary seats. The winning VVD party continued a European shift to the political right by advocating cuts in government spending and limiting immigration.)

            In the US in 2007, Ms. Ali set up the AHA foundation to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam.[lxviii] She warns against excusing crimes in the name of tolerance of cultural differences:[lxix]

Feminists need to be wary of the celebration of “cultural diversity” unless they want to inadvertently celebrate polygamy, child-marriage, marital rape, honor killings, wife beating, selective abortion of female fetuses and other traditions that are now legitimized in the name of culture. . . Westerners run many aid programs in non-Western nations. Most of these programs are value-neutral, and pose no challenge to the cultures of recipient nations. That must change.

A hopeful note is a 2004 film, The Syrian Bride, about the complexities of life on the border between Israel and Syria. The sister of the bride is an Arab woman who lives in a traditional Druze village in the Golan Heights occupied by Israel. She had raised her children and wants to go to university to be a social worker.  Her husband doesn’t want her to go, telling her the villagers will say, “Your wife wears the pants. You’ll shame me, people will say I can’t control my wife.” At the end of the film she walks away from a family gathering for the wedding, on her own, implying that she will attend university.

 In Lemon Tree, 2008, the same actress, Hiam Abbass, played a Palestinian widow who refuses to allow the Israeli government to cut down her lemon grove when the Defense Minister moves next to her. The actress grew up in a village and reported that her own father doesn’t think acting is an acceptable profession, but she does it anyway. Some Muslim nations are changing: A Jordanian young woman with a master’s degree, Nebaal Mhade emailed me: “The old imperative that the girls stay at home, this thing was old, in the meantime, the girls compete with men in all areas of work and just the opposite, it is now becoming the pride of her family.”

In another part of the world, China is the only country with a tradition of independent female mosques, with their own ahong, or imams, to lead prayers and teach the Quran to women.[lxx] A young Algerian activist also brings home for the winds of change:

I have been involved in political work since my adolescence -then an elected municipal councilor and member and spokesperson in several international bodies and committees. I am currently working for International NGOs in Maghreb Region, willing to see some progress made for women and within their daily lives.

       These past experiences and my day-to-day work as a political official and leader in Algeria have taught me numerous important lessons: As a woman in a male-dominated society I have to live under a double standard, constantly being forced to do better work than the other(s) (men) in order to defend my position, while being constantly discriminated against for what I think, say or do because I am a woman. This painful experience nevertheless has provided me with the necessary self-esteem and self-assertiveness that is crucial to possess in order to make a difference in society. Algeria must abandon its discriminatory Family Code, adopted in 1984, even though amended in 2004, which has relegated women to the status of legal minors. Kahina, ?, f, Algeria[lxxi]

Gender roles in a Socialist Country–China

I want to become more docile and cute. Dong Mei, 14, f, rural China

I want to be a boy, as they can walk in strides, speak loudly or laugh loudly. All in all, they are free to do everything. Red Apple, 16, f, rural China

“Chinese woman hold up half the sky” comes from Mao, but the leading star of the feminism movement was his wife Jiang Qin, a very ambitious woman.  She caused a stir in China, a main character of the Cultural Revolution. After the Revolution the feminism movements still went on and were very effective.  Some say all Chinese women should thank her.  

         But the thing is not about law or any organization. It’s about mind, about perception. The feudal ideas die hard. Some of women don’t know they are treated unequally, they think it’s natural as the way it is. They follow the feudal moral principles. They think they are property of their husband and the family; their duty is to serve the whole family. At this point, women even have sexism themselves. But more and more women appear in political affairs. More and more women make effort. Yuan, 19, m, China

I asked other Chinese college students to share their thoughts about the status of women, asking them, “Chairman Mao taught that women hold up half the sky. Are women still discriminated against?” They give themselves western names. “Yes,” said 6 young men and 63 young women. “No” said 11 males and 25 females. “Equality is stepping into people’s minds. It is an international issue, it needs the efforts of every country,” Cole points out. The majority who thought sexism still exists explained that women are often not considered for jobs and are not in top management in companies or the government [as is true in the US]. “It’s a common phenomenon in any country,” Sophie accurately points out. Anlin said, “Bosses think women should stay at home to do housework and take care of their children.” Wang Lin said it’s rare to find women working in science and technology fields, but many women work for the government and financial companies, reports Margaret.

In the countryside, families still prefer boys because girls leave to live with their husbands’ families and male muscles are needed to farm. Suicide is the leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 34, with about half involving rural women who drink pesticide to escape the grimness of their lives. Sandy wrote, “to give birth to a boy may mean to have good harvests.”  Mango explained, “If couples have a girl, they still want to have a boy though they will be fined. I think it’s unfair; we are born equal.” Some parents still abandon infant girls: Sandy reports, “When I was a child, I saw some female babies abandoned to the street, waiting for others to adopt it. But now all the people surrounding me are very fond of girls, either girl or boy is OK. Being a girl, you have beautiful clothes to wear.” Zhou Hui wrote, “In my hometown girls have to leave school to earn money to support their brothers’ education fee. I am lucky my father is a great man who values girls’ education.”

Traditional roles are maintained where the man is considered the head of the family, stronger and cleverer. Jon said, “Women and men have their own special roles.” Ava writes, “I want to be beautiful and slim.” Several girls said they wished they were male because they’d have more freedom, but one said that women are “more serious, careful, and patient.” Sheryl wishes she could,

. . .be a man and come back to ancient times, to be a captain, leading many poor people to seek for their happy life. I want to learn from Chairman Mao to devote myself to human civilization. After fighting, we’ll be free, then I can relax, riding a horse in the blue sky, waving a whip, driving groups of sheep and singing a song on grass. That’s fantastic.

Rena observes, “Chinese people are so shy that they find it hard to express their true feelings, especially to face their parents.”

Sexism is alive and well on the university campus. Jane reports, “ I worked for the students’ union for a year and I had the opportunity to become the chairman. Finally, a boy and I are both the chairmen. In others’ eyes, I’m more capable than him. But I had to be the vice-chairman because I’m female and I also have to do more work than him. That’s unfair, I thought, so I quit.” Shauna said, “Two weeks ago, I wanted to take part in the tennis competition in our campus, but then my classmates told me the competition was just for boys.” Swallow reports, “Last year our head teacher said that we need a PE delegate. I like running and jumping, so I joined the vote. I had more supporters than a boy. To my surprise, my head teacher (a woman) said, “It’s traditional, the PE delegate should be a male.” It made me very angry and unhappy. It’s so unfair.”’

            Generally, Chinese students agreed sexism is decreasing with newer generations; one girl said parents are realizing the importance of education for both sexes;  “My grandma doesn’t like me as she does her grandsons, but my parents love me very much.” Eddy believes “in some aspects females do better than males.” “We are the new generation. The country needs us to develop the economy,” concludes Ivy.

            In an online survey of 5,521 singles, 44% thought that fear of marriage was common in young people.[lxxii] China is seeing a reaction against marriage among young people like this one:

Women take a large share of the responsibility in marriage these days, and the cost of housing and bearing a child makes me wary of making that commitment. Heavy pressure at work, from my parents, and the expectations of my boyfriend and his parents are already a lot to handle. If I’m this exhausted when single I don’t see how I could ever cope with actually being married. Li Jun, 29, free-lancer.

In the most populated country, the one child policy is leading to feminist attitudes.[lxxiii] In some parts of China, men outnumber women by as much as 20% because of the one child policy—24 million more young men under 19.[lxxiv] By 2020, around 30 million men won’t be able to find wives. As a result, educated career women are in great demand. In a 2004 survey, 45% of the young women said they didn’t they expect to give up career for family.[lxxv]  Another survey of young women found they were critical of media portrayal of women as subservient to men. Although men tend to think their money-making ability is key to attracting a good wife, women say they are looking for a husband with integrity and a sense of responsibility. Two-thirds polled by the All-China Women’s Federation wouldn’t mind if their husbands earned less than they did.

The Communist Party includes the Women’s Federation, so the organization isn’t feminist but follows the government line. No independent activist organizations are allowed. When I was at an international women’s conference in Beijing in the 90s, the Federation presentations stuck to boring statistics about women rather than policy discussions. The Federation‘s 2009 report on women’s rights included, “Media coverage in 2009 of gender discrimination in the workplace, domestic violence, sexual violence and legal disclosure of family property in 2009 signified growing government and media awareness of the need to protect women’s rights and interests.”[lxxvi] However, Sun Shijin, professor of Sociology at Fudan University, reports that, “most young women today feel that the Women’s Federation and its efforts are “silly.”[lxxvii]

A Chinese female blogger states,

Male and female inequality is the natural order of things.[lxxviii] This is not simply some poisonous leftovers of China’s feudal past, but the laws of nature. Even in another few hundred years, there will be no more equality than there is now. Women are built differently, they give birth, are designed to feed children and age quicker than men. This is a biological rather than political question.

On the feminist side, the Women’s Federation magazine, Women of China, published an interview with a popular TV host, Zeng Zimo, who generated controversy by her statement that married men with mistresses should take responsibility rather than blaming the women.[lxxix] She said, “Man is traditionally regarded as superior to woman but, Zeng asked, ‘Shouldn’t men take certain social responsibilities?’ She wanted to strike blows both for women’s equal rights to romance and against China’s still patriarchal society. The more independent women are, the more pressure they have to bear.” As a result of her comments, her TV network expressed disapproval by demanding that they vet all her future interviews.

She is not alone in her criticism of men with mistresses: the divorce rate is increasing, one divorce for every five marriages registered in 2009. A researcher explained that according to a regional survey conducted by his team, “extramarital affairs have become a rising cause of divorce in the country, particularly in large cities.[lxxx] Rural women had better tolerance of extramarital affairs compared with their city counterparts.” He added that the divorce rates will likely increase because young adults are, “better educated than their parents, are more independent economically and have developed a stronger sense of self, which tends to wreck marriages more easily.”

In the semi-autobiographical novel Shanghai Baby, the young female author describes Coco, her Generation X main character at age 25. Coco is “a typical new Chinese girl, representative of a new generation of socially and sexually liberated young Chinese women.”[lxxxi] She wants to be famous, like some of the other Chinese youth in the SpeakOut surveys. Author Wei Hui explained that after her first year of college, “I rebelled. I went wild. That’s what I wrote about.” Her book was banned in China for being “decadent, debauched and a slave of foreign culture,” which I would agree with, although I don’t support censorship. The government burned 40,000 copies, but readers bought it in the West probably because of the publicity this generated. Most of Coco’s literary references are to Western writers (Henry Miller is her favorite) and music, although she says Shanghai has a strong attraction for Japanese media, appliances, and food.

Liberation means Coco moves out of her parents’ apartment, has sex with both her live-in boyfriend who becomes a drug addict and with a married German lover, smokes lots of cigarettes and marijuana, takes sleeping pills, lives on take-out food, and is generally narcissistic. She says, “I wouldn’t set myself up as a women’s lib warrior,” but values successful women and doesn’t want to spend all her time with them talking about men. When she gets ogled wearing a red bikini, Coco worries, “What was it that made me seem so like an empty-headed Barbie doll? She concludes, “I’m not a good girl, and God doesn’t like girls like me. Though I do like myself.” Sex, drugs, and shopping are not feminism.

I asked Yuan if the scarcity of girls is giving them more power in China:

I didn’t think about girls being confident because of the lack of women until you mentioned it. So I asked some girl friends. To my surprise, none of them was surprised about this. They were calm and thought “it makes no difference.” Apparently, finding the right person is more important for them. And some say them are “making effort to get married,” trying not to be single! One told me about “剩女”, which I hear a lot recently, meaning “spinster.” She said her spinster colleagues tend to have bad temper. I don’t really hear about feminism around nor in the media. No one talks about it, as if we are always equal. The only thing reminds me the equality is [an issue] is that some complain in some industry it’s easier for guys to get a job.  As to All-China Women’s Federation, I feel it’s an association, which when women’s equality is compromised, they can turn to for help. I don’t feel they are feminists. 

Women in Government

Why are most countries having men leaders only and not ladies?

 Zulea, 17, f, Kenya

I’d like to be the first Kenyan leader who completely eradicated corruption and poverty. Lylac, 16, f, Kenya

Some countries had early women’s movements as part of their nationalist struggles against colonial rule, as in Turkey, Egypt and India. Feminism spread around the globe in the 1970s spurred on by the UN’s International Year of the woman in 1975, The UN organized conferences on women in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995).[lxxxii] I attended the Copenhagen conference and was surprised that most of the official delegates were men. My son and his dad made the local TV news, showing a father caring for his baby. The 15-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action occurred in 2010. Motivated by this UN leadership, governments set up ministries for women’s issues beginning in the 70s. Universities set up Affirmative Action programs and Women’s Studies programs in the 1970s—I was the first coordinator at my university.

The UN adopted CEDAW in 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Only eight nations haven’t signed on, including the US–the only developed nation that hasn’t signed. It deals with poverty, violence, AIDS, access to representation in government, etc.[lxxxiii] We can pressure our politicians to sign on or enforce CEDAW. Public-private programs assist women to advance in the workplace; Mexico’s federal program, Generosidad, awards the Gender Equity Seal to private employers who do an excellent job of gender equity. It inspired similar programs in Brazil, Costa Rica, and Egypt.

The countries that have the best equality programs are in Scandinavia, with Iceland at the top, followed by Norway and Finland, according to the Global Gender Gap Index created by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.[lxxxiv] (The US is in 19^th place.) (Although Sweden is a leader in equality, the disturbingly violent 2009 films Millennium Trilogy reveal the ugly underbelly of corruption, prostitution, violence against women displayed in the life of the main character, Lisbeth Slander.) In Sweden both men and women are entitled to 480 days of parental leave, with childcare and elder care. A Feminist Initiative political party was formed in 2005.[lxxxv]

         The Inter-Parliamentary Union reports that women’s presence in parliaments and in ministerial positions significantly increases investments in social welfare and legal protection, as well as honesty in government and business. For example, in India in 1993, the government changed the constitution to require that one third of village panchayats chiefs be women. A reporter comments, “In rural India, which is by any measure more patriarchal and conservative than urban India, the promotion of women to public positions of power constitutes nothing short of a revolution.”[lxxxvi] Although only 54% of women are literate, compared to 75% of men, and women’s wages average only one third of men’s. In villages run by women, more water pumps or taps were installed and were better maintained.[lxxxvii] Although fewer than 11% of members of the country’s parliament are women, a proposal in 2010 to extend the one-third reservation for women in parliament caused uproar. It was passed by the upper house, but not the lower house.[lxxxviii] Despite this activity, an Indian activist told me in 2010, “India never had a feminist movement! I think that is the problem with the ‘women’s movement’ in India. It does not have a feminist foundation.”[lxxxix]

What about on the local tribal level of leadership? I asked a Nigerian chief, James Iowarri, if women can be chiefs. “Yes, in some communities, women can also be made Chiefs, while in some, only men can be made Chiefs, while their wives are made Lolo or Olori. In IgboLand–my tribe, an accomplished woman of integrity, dedication and of note, can be made a Chief. Such women are rare but they exist.”

The first country to give women the right to vote was New Zealand, in 1893, but the process was gradual continuing in this century.[xc] Since then women have headed these countries including: Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka (the first country to have a woman prime minister), Bangladesh, Haiti, Philippines, Ireland, United Kingdom, Israel, Norway, Finland, Argentina, and Brazil. In 2011, 19 women were presidents or prime ministers.[xci] Sonia Gandhi (Italian by birth) is the head of the ruling Congress Party in India and the main opposition leader in 2009 was another woman, Bijoya Chakraborty. A Dalit (untouchable) woman was in the running for prime minister. In 2010, just nine of 151 elected heads of state (6%) and 11 of 192 heads of government (6%) were women. [xcii]

An example of a woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 1938) became the first African woman president in 2006. She said voters told her during the campaign, “Men have failed us. Men are too violent, too prone to make war. Women are less corrupt, less likely to be focused on getting fancy cars and fancy homes for themselves.” Her campaign relied on women campaigners going village-to-village, door-to-door campaigning. She appointed women as ministries of Youth and Sports, Gender and Development, Commerce, Foreign Affairs, and Finance. She believes that being mothers gives women leaders “a sensitivity to humankind” that will make the world a better and safer place.[xciii]

She explains in her book This Child Will Be Great that African women are honored as mothers and aunts, but are not considered equal to men. Her husband felt free to hit her. She was reluctant to divorce him though because fathers get custody of children, but finally did get a divorce and he did take her four boys. She went on to be educated in the US to be an economist and served in Liberian government agencies, the UN and the World Bank

She was jailed and threatened when young rebels brought civil war to her country. Samuel Doe was only 28 when he and his fellow soldiers forcefully took control of Liberia in 1989, followed by civil war between battling warlords until 2002. They relied on child soldiers, killed a quarter of a million of the 3 million Liberians and uprooted most who survived. Johnson was jailed and threatened with death by the young soldiers who took over as rulers. When soldiers kidnapped and threatened to kill her, she calmed them down by saying, “Think about your mother. How would you feel is someone did this to her?” Democratic elections were finally held in 2005 with Johnson Sirleaf’s victory at the polls. When she asked children what they wanted, they said to go to school. Her first year as president, school fees were abolished in public primary schools and reduced in high schools, creating a 40% increase in school enrollment. Parents can be fined if children were working on the streets during school hours.

In 2010, she reported on her accomplishments:[xciv]:

Women hold strategic positions in the Cabinet and in other government bodies. I have established a market development fund supported by private donations to empower rural women through better working conditions and literacy training. A second fund, also from private donations, provides funding for the building of 50 schools, training of 500 teachers and scholarships for 5,000 girls throughout the country; girls and women have voices in claiming participation in societal endeavors.

Over 97 countries use gender quota systems resulting in women being nearly 33% of their legislatures, compared to 12% in countries without quotas, according to UN data. Sweden has a quota system and women held 47% of its parliamentary seat in 2007.[xcv] Argentina passed a law in 1991 requiring that 1 in 3 candidates nominated for election to the legislature must be women. In France, a 1998 law required political parties to nominate an equal number of male and female candidates for elections, but parties often pay fines rather than comply. The bigger parties violated the law and paid the penalties. In Iraq, 25% of the seats in parliament are reserved for women, but they don’t have much power, and the Minister for Women’s Affairs, Nawal al-Samarraie, quit when the government cut her budget to $1,500 a month for the entire ministry.

By 2010, only 19% of parliament representatives were women, up from 11% in 1995.[xcvi] At the current rate of progress, it will take 40 years to reach gender parity in the world’s national legislatures.[xcvii] The highest numbers of women politicians were in Rwanda, Sweden and South Africa. Nine chambers lack any women at all, as in Saudi Arabia. In terms of heads of state, only nine of 151 elected leaders were women. Some countries are making progress in terms of women in power by setting quotas. Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in parliament because genocide killed so many people. The highest percent of women in lower or single legislatures were in these countries, 2007:

1. Rwanda – 48%

2. Sweden – 47%

3. Finland – 42%

4. Costa Rica – 39%

5. Norway – 38%

Spain requires that women make up 50% of its cabinet and 50% of all company boards (quotas for women corporate board members are also required in Norway). Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Zapatero appointed an equal number of women and men to his Cabinet, including 31-year-old Bibiana Aído, head of a new ministry for equality. (Socialist parties also governed in Portugal and Greece in 2010.) Zapatero explained,

 I’m not just antimachismo, I’m a feminist. One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other. We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation, but the most unjust domination is that of one half of the human race over the other half. The more equality women have, the fairer, more civilized and tolerant society will be. Sexual equality is a lot more effective against terrorism than military strength.”[xcviii]

Neus, a Spanish graduate student, added:

Yes, the equality in the government cabinet is what he promised that would do if he got elected. It is the first step towards a more egalitarian job market, since we still have lower salaries for the same position that a man has in the private sector. And most of the high position jobs are given to men. I guess that the public sector is the one that has to model and demonstrate women’s abilities and then the private may follow. We are in the very beginning, but things are changing; we have to keep pushing for our rights!

   Activism for Gender Equality

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project poll of people in 22 nations about gender equality, released in 2010, found that solid majorities support it and say inequality persists in their countries.[xcix]  For example, many believe that men have more access to better paid jobs. Women are far more likely to perceive gender problems. Nigerian men were the only exception to believing in equal rights. Muslim respondents—men more than women—are least likely to advocate equality and in fact their preference for equality in marriage has decreased over time in Nigeria and Pakistan. On the other side, attitudes towards marriage became more egalitarian over the decade in seven of 19 countries, as in Jordan, Russia, Poland, Lebanon, Mexico and The US.

Many people of various religions feel that when jobs are scarce, men have more right to a job, including mainly Muslim countries and India, China, South Korea and Nigeria. Men are more likely to have this view. When asked if it’s more important for a boy to have a university education than a girl, a majority agreed only in Egypt (50%), among Nigerian Muslims (50%), Pakistan (51%), and India (63%). When asked if men or women have better lives, about half agreed men did (more women than men) and about half said they were the same, except for South Korea and Japan which thought women have a better life (perhaps because of men’s long work hours). It’s encouraging that advocacy of equality is increasing, but worrisome that it lags in Muslim countries.

What do women want? Only 10% of all young Europeans in a large survey favor keeping a strong distinction between men’s and women’s roles.[c] Women want equal opportunity with men and not to be treated as inferior. They want equal pay for equal work. In the US, a woman earns only an average of 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns for full-time work, although women are almost half the workers. The wage gap is bigger for employed mothers and African Americans and Latinas, despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963. For a college-educated woman, the wage losses over her lifetime are over one million dollars, compared to their male peers.

A telephone survey of US Generation Y women found almost half would like to be entrepreneurs  (47%) so they can be their own boss and balance career and family.[ci] Although most would like to see a woman President, they are not interested in holding political office or in being a CEO because of their focus on balance. Their top political issue is education.

Nala, a 16-year-old Maasai girl in Tanzania, helped organize support groups for Maasai women. In her twenties, she founded the Massai Women’s Forum, which now has over 30 chapters. It expanded from adult literacy classes to village nursery schools, loans to women’s groups, girls’ education programs, etc.  It’s considered one of the few organizations that really help people by creating a social network to create change. Nala described her work as “to educate young Maasai women who are being forced to marry older men…to advocate the right of Massai women’s education, because Maasai women need to do something different and not just get married. ….We have a lot of girls fleeing from forced marriages and coming to MWF because many them need education support.” [cii]

When Nala finished primary school, her father wanted her to marry. She put up a “big struggle” and refused to get married. She was strong-willed, given the nickname “half-man” by an uncle after she protected her family’s cattle herd from being stolen. Her male relatives were going on to secondary school and she wanted to go with them. Her cousin helped intercede with her father and tried to convince his father—an age group leader—to help her. After months of planning, disguised in a red blanket worn by Maasai men, at midnight she got in a waiting car of an educated Maasai friend of her cousin, who drove her to the capital city of Dar-es-Salaam. Her helpers talked her father into calling off the marriage and repaying the dowry. As 16, she began coordinating women’s groups.

Global feminism is spreading[1] Young women’s goals for activism and news stories about them are listed in the endnote[ciii] and here are some of their goals.

Equality

I will introduce equal opportunity to stop violence against women.

Saygee, 11, f, Liberia

Change the traditional values of patriarchal thought thoroughly.

 Ling, 14, f, rural China

I would improve women’s rights involving sexual abuse, labor, etc.

Rose, 15, f, Tanzania

I want to empower the youth as the bone of development of Nepal and eradicate discrimination, inequality, and eliminate social evils like early child marriage of girls, dowry, trafficking in girls, drug addiction and the bonded labor system [almost like slave labor, farmers are in debt to landowners].

Anzel, 16, f, Nepal

Realize that girls have got the same rights as boys. Some adults think that girls’ duty is taking care of family. I would make them realize time has changed and goes with technology. ?, 17, f, Tanzania

I’d change gender stereotypes of giving men work and denying women, saying that women are for kitchen work. ?, f, teen, Kenya

Non-traditional or Successful Careers

I want to become a blacksmith. Nikita, 14, f, Netherlands

My purpose is to mark my name in the world. Neelima, 14, f, India

I want to make mistakes so I can learn from it and others can learn from it. I want to be noticed, not just someone you walk past in the street. I want to make something of myself. Talia, 15, f, Australia

I’d like to be an explorer. Although it’s dangerous, and I might have to pay my life for it, I still love it. To get close to nature, to listen to the harmonious sound of it, to go to the animal world to feel their special skills for survival, these are all interesting although I have to take risks. Zhangqihong, 15, f, rural China

I have a dream and one day it’s going to be real. After I finish high school I want to be the first Palestinian girl pilot. Rafeef, 16, f, Palestine

I want to be a diplomat because I like helping people very much and we can live in another country for a while. Fitriana, 16, f, Indonesia

I want to be a doctor and help my poor and kind Afghan people.

Nadia, 17, f, Afghanistan

I want to be somebody who does what no woman did or only few do in my work. To be different in this way I need to be well educated and literate. I should have the feelings of equality between a man and woman like I can also be equal to man. I should have the ability to compete. Right now I have no interest in marriage. I am thinking to remain single in the future but if at all I am to marry, I would prefer to go by my choice. We don’t have custom of selecting groom by the parents. Chuney, 17, f, Bhutan

I’d like to be the mayor of my village. Eman, 17, f, Bedouin in Israel.

Feminism

I would change the superiority of men to women. Monhesa, 1, f, Kenya

Although feminism in the US influenced the spread of the women’s movement around the world in the 1970s, women in other countries sometimes feel judged for cultural practices like the veil, don’t feel all women want the same things and don’t aspire to be like American women. Lila Abu-Lughod has done fieldwork in Egypt for decades and reports: “I cannot think of a single woman I know . . .who has ever expressed envy of U.S. women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence and social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God.”[civ]

Media centers on powerful men. A shy Wisconsin girl who was even afraid to raise her hand to ask the teacher if she could go to the bathroom, at age 19 Jensine Larsen went to the Amazon to work with native women. Then she went to Burma to assist refugees. At age 23 she had a vision about increasing media’s coverage of women. She found that only 10% of central stories are about women and only 1% of the world’s editors are female. Although women and girls do two-thirds of the work, they only own 1% of the financial assets. By the time she was 28 to raise the funds to start Pulse Wire, with local reporters in over 21 countries telling women’s stories, with a magazine and website and virtual store where women from all over the globe can talk with each other.[cv]

In the second most populated country, an Indian college student wrote to me, “I want to eradicate the evils mainly faced by girls and solve the problems of girls.” Sunitha, 16, f, India. This implies the need for a woman’s movement. A “gender activist,” Rita Banerji, believes that despite the activity of thousands of women’s organizations in India,[cvi]

The women’s movement today in India unfortunately is like an ingrown toenail. It is going in the wrong direction. For example, there are women arguing that sati [a widow joins her husband on his burning funeral pyre] is not murder but cultural and religious way of women committing suicide, so we shouldn’t defame it; or that we should continue to allow Muslim men to legally have four wives). It is hurting itself. So mothers-in-law murder daughters-in-law; women strangle their own baby girls. When a group of women at a pub last year were molested and beaten up for “violating Indian tradition” the NCW (the National Commission on Women), the highest office protecting women’s rights, said the women had asked for it because they were drinking and inappropriately dressed.

The Feminist movement believed that a woman’s body and being is her personal domain. Freedom within and freedom without. But in India the women’s movement sees women just as suppressed citizens that have to be given rights. Do you see the difference? The only feminist movement we had has now died out completely. The women who started were getting death threats and they just shut everything down. I wrote about it online.[cvii]

What are young women thinking about women’s issues in North America? A female college student in Canada wrote this email to me about feminism:

         Recently I was assigned a paper for a philosophy class. The basis was “Is Feminism Dead?”  I had never considered myself a feminist.  Sure enough, my mom was a feminist. I was raised equal. I was fortunate to grow up with a strong upbringing, and feeling unequal was rare for me growing up even in such a diverse city as Chicago’s Southside, especially in the issue of gender. I kept up with the boys in sports and math. I joked about being a woman. I accepted that women specialize in some things and men in others. Still, I love what makes me woman and feel no need to hide those qualities.

         Sure enough, though, I did not consider myself a feminist. I wasn’t a man-hater. I wanted gender empowerment for all. I didn’t see myself as a powerful businesswoman, a lesbian, or any other generalization that comes with a stereotypical feminist. I felt disconnected from my mother in that way. She earns more than my father. I didn’t think this was unusual. My mother was the prime caregiver, yet she was the prime moneymaker. We were insured under my mother, and I never felt that this was strange. My mother knew that she was a powerful woman. She worked full time in college and received no help from her parents who only had a girl. She wanted to be a lawyer. She couldn’t; the financial means were not there. My mother is not a man-hater. She never raised me that way either. She is a feminist though. For that I am thankful.

         However, I feel generational differences much like you were describing in your book Woman’s Culture in A New Era: A Feminist Revolution? I have friends who misunderstand the term “feminist.”  If media, politics, and business are to blame for this I will never know.  Realizing that I have been a feminist all along was a real shock to me.  I am grateful for your book and will certainly share your ideas with my feminist-hating friends. I appreciate your time and effort you have spent on such a subject that is not projected as loudly as it should be. Still, I believe that organizations such as NOW are out of touch with the third generation and are buying into endorsements and bureaucratic BS of business.  I guess where that is where my fight starts.  I am proud to be a Third Generation Feminist. The Revolution will continue.

Lauran DeCeault, Illinois, university student in Quebec

Lauren explained above how many young women in the US don’t see the need for the feminist movement and consider established organizations like NOW bureaucratic and out of touch.[cviii] An older feminist, Paula Rothenberg wrote in a 2007 article, “Snatched from the Jaws of Victory: Feminism Then and Now,” that the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s was about the deep forms of male and white privilege, calling for radical change. Feminism challenged the basic beliefs about women’s nature, and definition of beauty as looking like a Barbie doll in high heels and girdles. It fought for a woman’s right to choose her own destiny and know that she isn’t inferior or subordinate to a man. It fought against the social and institutional inequality of women. But women in the US still earn 78 cents for a man’s dollar and are only 16% of Congress members. The media still has many more male characters, more males who speak, and females are five times as likely to be shown in sexy clothes.[cix] (A French film provides us a rare role model of a brave 10-year-old girl who scares away a wolf pack and an eagle, and isn’t afraid of a bear, all in her efforts to protect her favorite fox. The 2007 film is called The Fox and the Child.)

But now Rothenberg sees girls wearing T-shirts labeled “Bitch” and “Stupid Girl,” wanting to look like Barbie dolls or dress in sexy skimpy clothes like Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, Mariah Carey, and L’il Kim. Some teens get breast enlargement surgery as birthday gifts. “The personal is political”—a social problem–devolved into the personal is simply personal. Rothenberg concludes,

We’ve been duped into trading social critique and collective action for a vision of feminism that offers us personal choice without social responsibility and without social context. Once upon a time the personal really was political. Today, it is simply personal. Racism, sexism, and class privilege are still alive and well. They frame our choices and define the meaning of what we choose.[cx]

            Susan Douglas also argues that these antifeminist attitudes are manufactured by the media that defines women by their sexuality:[cxi]

Enlightened sexism is a manufacturing process that is constantly produced by the media. Its components—anxiety about female achievement; renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies and faces; dual exploitation and punishment of female sexuality; dividing of women against each other by age, race and class; and rampant branding and consumerism—began to swirl around in the early 1990s, consolidating as the dark star it has become in the early 21st century.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Banks quotes a young woman who observes, “What’s wrong is that the ‘consumer culture’ has become such a defining force in young women’s search for identity. It’s what you’re wearing, what your weight is, rather than what you believe in, how you think.” in The popular TV series and movie Sex in the City, illustrates how status comes from the brand of shoe and purse you display.[cxii] In the US the “supergirl dilemma,” causes girls to be stressed about their grades, their weight, and relationships and sexuality. “When you’re a teen, everyone scrutinizes you, so you feel that you have to be happy, and perfect, all the time. I guess what really bugs me is judgmental people.” (Paulina, 14, f, Louisiana) Another girl said, “The problem is I can never be thin enough, I can never be pretty enough, and I can never be good enough.” Girls Inc surveyed more than 2,000 girls in grades 3 through 12 throughout the nation in 2006. Nationally, 60% of girls said they often feel stressed, including nearly half of elementary school girls. An Indian girl reports the same pressures to be supergirl:

I have to be in different characters in my daily life. I’ve to take care of people in my family, I’ve to study in my school, I’ve to be the captain of my team, I’ve to take care of my father’s business. So I’ve to deal with everything and many things bothers me. I just say to me that I am not born to live for me but for the world. This helps me to stay calm. Edith, 17, f, India

Girls are expected to be high achievers as well as appealing to males. Gabrielle Bernstein is an author in her 20s who lives in New York City. She emailed me describing young women ages 17 to 25 she knows, who are in the midst of a transitional period.

These young women grew up with Title IX sports, reproductive rights, working moms and Internet in their homes. They have their own cell phone, their own web page and a sense of confidence that is unique in American history. Yet despite these numbers and this unprecedented confidence, how they will function in the world mystifies them and causes much anxiety.

As discussed in a New York Times article titled “Amazing Girls” and books like Dan Kindlon’s Alpha Girls, young women today are struggling with conflicting messages. In school they are expected to bring home all As, be on every sports team, get into the best colleges while at the same time be thin, attractive, in committed relationships and always, always smile. Sara Rimer notes, “If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything.[cxiii]” Rimer quotes a Massachusetts high school senior who has three Advanced Placement classes, a part-time job and sings in a choir: “You’re supposed to do all these things and not go insane.” These girls work very hard to get into top universities, fearful they won’t be able to achieve their parents’ lifestyles.

            The attractive achieving woman is a global theme. In India, instead of showing a woman as being dependent on her family and a burden to them, Unilever (UL) ran successful but controversial ads for its Fair and Lovely line of skin-lightning beauty products.[cxiv] A TV commercial shows a young woman with her father, who complains about not having sons to provide for him. The daughter then uses the cream and becomes fairer, so she gets a better-paid job as a flight attendant and is able to help out her parents. The ad was controversial because it disparages dark skin, but does show a woman provider.

            In China, “Ads never build the image that women should be strong or successful, just that they should be pretty,” stated Zhang Zheng, a 25-year-old brand manager.[cxv] Professional women are only shown using beauty care products. ‘There are only two images of women: the pretty girl and the good mother.’ The pretty girl predominates, and invariably is dangerously thin, scantily clad, and listlessly passive.”

The future trend is the ascendency of women, according to a provocative book The Decline of Men by Guy Garcia,[cxvi] updated in an article by Hanna Rosin, titled “The End of Men.”[cxvii] She suggests postindustrial society that values “social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus” and a “post-heroic” management style suits women better than men. Three-quarters of the 8 million jobs lost in the US Great Recession were men’s jobs. The banking crisis that precipitated it was blamed on men by the Prime Minister of Iceland, Johanna Sigurdardottir, who campaigned to end the “age of testosterone.” Usually, the greater the power of women, the greater a country’s economic success, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Hanna Rosin points out that in the US women are a majority of the workforce (as of 2010), that women are the majority of university students on undergraduate (60%) and graduate levels, as well as workers with managerial and professional jobs. With the disappearance of manufacturing jobs for men, women-headed families dominate working-class families and 40% of babies are born to unmarried mothers. She refers to a Super Bowl ad for Dodge Charger titled “Man’s Last Stand,” after a hen-pecked man says, “I will put the seat down, I will separate the recycling, I will carry your lipbalm,” but is empowered by owning the Charger. In Japan, young men who reject the work ethic of their fathers are called “herbivores,” while their female peers are “carnivores” or the “hunters.”

What Boys Think

I would like to stop the dowry system and corruption. Bhat, 16, m, India

I do agree that men dominate most fields in life and women should be given EQUAL opportunity. But if this term of GENDER DISCRIMMINATION is all together ignored, there would there be proper equality between the two genders. Media and people have made such big deal out of FEMINISM and DISCRIMINATION that these terms are enough to make a dividing line between females and males. I would give you an example: in a local office of an NGO, all the staff was male. One day a female worker was added to the staff of only males for the sake of giving “equal opportunity to females” and was preferred over a better-qualified male applicant. Now, she may be good but the other male applicant was better than her and now the whole office is fed up. Shehroz, 17, m, Pakistan

Most of the girls’ parents, with much fear towards their daughter, do not give much freedom to her. Instead, they treat her as a prisoner. This has to be changed and every girl given sufficient freedom to be friendly with others and to do jobs without wasting her 22 years of valuable education. Abhinar, 18, m, India

Let the girls drive. Abdullah, 19, m, Saudi Arabia [Boys get tired of having to chauffeur their female relatives. On November 6, 2009, Saudi women launched the Black Ribbon Campaign against the Saudi male guardianship system. Some women protested by driving their cars through Riyadh.]

Equality must be given to every one in the societies because in different tribes women have no say or do not participate in decision-making. I will give first priority to women in employment opportunities in order they will not discriminated by their husbands. Also I will try my level best to help children who are orphans, so I will try to make fund for them to survive like other kids.

Sarrwatt, 19, m, Tanzania

When I asked the high school seniors who critiqued my book about equal rights, the guys said they were sick and tired of reverse discrimination, as when minorities are favored in college admission. White males are the only ones not allowed to discriminate, they said, as women can sue for sexual harassment at work and get millions of dollars. They don’t feel their generation discriminates on the basis of gender or ethnicity. Feminism doesn’t seem relevant to them, despite public comments like this one in 2009, when the Governor of Virginia remarked, “The dynamic new trend of working women and feminists … is ultimately detrimental to the family.” This chapter demonstrates that, despite quotas for legislators and many conferences and studies, gender equality is rare. Young people are more comfortable with women’s rights.

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[i]See EqualityNow.org. www.girleffect.org Facts sheet about girls and an action plan called “the Girl Effect: Your Move.”

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW2010pub.htm

www.wikigender.org/index.php/Countries:World.

[ii] Kiva.org, globalgiving.com, planusa.org, womenforwomen.org, care.org, girlslearn.org, globalfundforwomen.org, www.onexone.org/what-we-do.php (helps children), etc.

[iii] http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/12/afghan-women/addario-photography

[iv] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, “The Women’s Crusade, The New York Times Magazine, August 23, 2009, p. 28. See their book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Alfred A Knopf, 2009.

[v] Tina Rosenberg, “The Daughter Deficit,” The New York Times Magazine, August 23, 2009, p. 23. Statistics are from Goretti Nyabenda, p. 33-34, also in the Times.

[vi] Bruce and Lloyd 1997; Eisler, Loye, and Norgaard 1995; Hausman, Tyson, and Zahidi 2009.

 􀂃 9.2 million children die every year before they reach their 5th birthday,

􀂃 97 percent of child deaths occur in 68 developing countries,

􀂃 A quarter of all children are underweight,

􀂃 A third have stunted growth, and

􀂃 75 million primary-school-age children—mostly girls—are not enrolled in school (Hague 2008).

www.urban.org/publications/412101.html

[vii] UNP, “Framework for Action on Adolescents and Youth

Opening Doors with Young People: 4 Keys,” 2007.

UNFPAwww.unfpa.org/public/pid/396

[viii] http://www.lpch.org/aboutus/news/releases/2009/yen.html

[ix] John M. Glionna, “A Voice for Rural Women of China,” Los Angeles Times, January 02, 2008|  http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/02/world/fg-women2

[x] Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, June, 22, 2010

EDTwww.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

[xi] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/02/demint-gays-unmarried-pregnant-women-teachers_n_748131.html

[xii] Girls Need to Grow, Impact Report No. 2, The Global Fund for Women. Study conducted from 1998-2000. http://www.globalfundforwomen.org

[xiii] Karin Ronnow, “Rising Stars,” Central Asia Institute’s Journey of Hope, Vol. IV, 2010, p. 31.

[xiv] 1. If you could ask a question of the wisest person in the world, what would you ask her or him about life?

Ans: (after taking a long time) How do you live your life in home and what do you do?

2. What bothers you in your daily life?  What practice best helps you stay calm?

Ans: I get bothered with the extra work that I do in my daily life and don’t even get appreciated for it. I do the household chores from day to night and when my little siblings spread the mess again, I get annoyed and I have to do the work all over again. It bothers me.

I just console myself with the fact that I am doing it for my own family. I am stressed so much at times that I sit back and cry but I don’t tell anyone and keep on doing the work for them (at this moment, she has tears in her eyes).

3. If there were one thing you could change about adults, what would it be?

Ans: I will like the adults not to say inappropriate stuff and appreciate the work I do. Understand me.

4. What would you like to change about yourself?

Ans: I wish I could have studied so that’s the only thing I would change about myself.

5. What do you like to do for fun?

Ans: We don’t do anything for fun. We don’t have extra time for extra activities. I just sit back at times in my home and talk to my sisters about life. That’s all my life is.

6. When have you felt most loved by someone else?

Ans: Never. As I said, my parents have not studied much so they don’t show their emotions. In fact, they don’t understand. I have never felt loved by anyone. Everyone orders me to do work for them.

7. Why do you think you’re here on earth; what’s your purpose? How are you influenced by global media (TV, Internet, advertisements, etc)?

Ans: I don’t really understand the reason. I have not studied Quran, the religion, or the school so I don’t know why I am here. I don’t like this pattern of life. I wish my life was better.

8. On a scale of 1 to 100, how highly would you grade your school? Why?

Ans: There is no school in my whole village for girls. There is only one Government school, which is for boys. There is none for girls.

   9.  What work would you like to do when you’re an adult?

Ans: I would like to be a MISS (teacher) or a Nurse.

   10. If you were the leader of your country, what changes would you make?

Ans: (good question, she says) I would like to finish the poverty. Provide homes for them, have the kids go to school, finish inflation, provide jobs and facilities to poors.

11. Imagine you get to write on a T-shirt going on a trip around the world. What do you want your T-mail to say to people?

Ans: (after taking a long time) I AM WITH ALL THE POOR PEOPLE IN THE WORLD AND WOULD HELP THEM IF I HAD POWER.

12. What is your daily routine?

Ans: I woke up at 7 am daily. Pick up the dirty utensils, wash them, clean rooms, and the outside, make beds, wash bathrooms, make the home look clean, and make breakfast for all the family members. After this, prepares to cook for lunch, make bread. After they eat, wash dishes. Then I take some rest and after that, I prepare to cook for the evening. That’s all I do daily.

13. Is your home all well furnished?

Ans: No, we have a mud house and that is badly affected lately due to floods. Our walls fell down so it was very hard for us to cover our house. Me and my sisters dared and set up the walls ourselves. It was very tiring. Still we have 2 walls to make. May Allah help us!

14. What would you like for your younger siblings to have that you didn’t get?

Ans: I would want my little 6-year-old sister to have all the necessities in the world. I would like her to have good education, good manners and grow up so well so that she get married in a good place.

15. Are you happy with your life?

Ans: Yes, I am happy with the fact that I have my family members around me and at least have a roof to be under it.

[xv] http://gaylekimball.wordpress.com/open-doors-literacy-project-in-pakistan/

[xvi] Adama and Naomi Doumbia. The Way of the Elders: West African Spirituality and Tradition. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2004, p. 111.

[xvii] Nepal Youth Foundation newsletter, November 2010. http://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org

[xviii] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), June 2010, p. 24. unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un…/unpan039616.pdf

[xix] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), June 2010, p. 24. unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un…/unpan039616.pdf

[xx] http://www.wateraidamerica.org/what_we_do/the_need/default.aspx

[xxi] Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda (PDF)

Center for Global Development, 2008 Clinton’s Global Initiative

[xxii] www.nyof.org

[xxiii] www.nyof.org/meetTheChildren/index.html

[xxiv] www.unicef.org/voy  Voices of Youth, March 5, 2006

[xxv] http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/01/5214051-undesired-in-india-boys-are-prized-over-girls-with-violent-results?pc=25&sp=50

[xxvi]http://www.globalhealthmagazine.com/conference_blog/a_radical_proposal_fighting_for_women_and_girls/

[xxvii] www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire/programs/action-blogging-campaign-gbv

[xxviii] www.vday.org/take-action/violence-against-women Includes more resource information, plus action guides for students.

[xxix] See the documentary Trading Women, a 2003 documentary filmed in Asia

[xxix] A Nigerian report in 2010 stated as many as 40,000 girls and women were trafficked to West African countries as sex slaves.

[xxx] http://www.iast.net/thefacts.htm

[xxxi] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Alfred a. Knopf, 2009, p. 9.

[xxxii] http://www.somaly.org/whoweare/

[xxxiii] www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Sf0vncj8M

[xxxiv] Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) affects nearly 170,000 girls and women in the United States and 140 million around the world. FGM is currently illegal in the US but the Girls Protection Act (H.R. 5137) of 2010 would make it a crime to transport minors outside the U.S. for the purpose of performing FGM.

[xxxv] http://www.globalhealthmagazine.com/guest_blog/mdg_5_3_billion/

MDG [UN Millennial Development Goal] 5: 3 BILLION Reasons to Invest in Young People’s Sexual and Reproductive Health

[xxxvi] Statistics about women in India http://sigi.org/gv_india.html

[xxxvii] Ranjit Malhotra, research paper, “Social-Legal Perspective of Forced Marriages,” 2010. At least “900 incidences of honor killings” take place in three states alone—Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh—every year.

http://www.asianage.com/india/%E2%80%98india-has-over-1000-honour-killings-year%E2%80%99-859

[xxxviii]Man Up is a global campaign to activate youth to stop violence against women and girls. On July 5-11-2010, the Man Up Campaign held their very first global summit to stop violence against women.  www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire/programs/action-blogging-campaign-gbv

[xxxix] www.iampowerful.org

[xl] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, op.cit, p. 182.

[xli] United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report, June 15, 2010. pp. 34, 36.

[xlii] www.huffingtonpost.com/melinda-gates/a-new-vision-for-the-heal_b_603337.html, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/women-deliver-2010-100607.aspx

[xliii] Anuj Chopra, “Pink Gang Women,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 14, 2009, p. A6. See a video: http://current.com/items/88939424_gulabi-gang-the-pink-women-of-india.htm

[xliv] Examples of NGOs started by young people http://gaylekimball.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/charitable-organizations-led-by-young-people/

[xlv] Outlook Magazine, January 12, 2004

[xlvi] Rita Banerji. Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies. Penguin Books, 2008, p. 285.

[xlvii] Banerji, p. 306. A 2004 estimate by Amnesty International was 15,000 while independent surveys report 25,000.

[xlviii] An Australian camera woman describes the conflict in Varanasi that shut down production, including the continued existence of widow houses.
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/28/water.html

[xlix] Banerji, p. 319.

[l] http://50millionmissing.wordpress.com/comments/feed/

[li] http://www.aol.in/bollywood-story/modernity-a-far-cry-for-women-on-small-screen-march-8-is-international-womens-day/819838 

[lii] Pete Engardio, Businessweek, October 3, 2005. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948530.htm

[liii] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8441949.stm

[liv] www.thenation.com/blog/154567/lawrence-wright-torture-taliban-and-what-do-about-afghanistan-part-ii-our-interview

Lawrence Wright, My Trip to Al-Qaeda, HBO, September 7, 2010.

[lv] Osama, 2003, is about a 12-year-old girl whose widowed mother disguises her as a boy so they can go outside—based on a true story, the first Afghan film after the fall of the Taliban. 2003 Divorce Iranian Style, 1998, was shot in a divorce court. Runaway, 2001, was filmed at a shelter for runaway girls and abused women in Tehran.

[lvi] Joel Brinkley, Afghanistan’s Dirty Secret: Pedophilia,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 29, 2010, p. E8.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-08-29/opinion/22949948_1_karzai-family-afghan-men-president-hamid-karzai

[lvii] www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128970264

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.html

[lviii] Emily Wax, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041002908.htmlwww.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041002908.html

[lix] http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/08/afghanistans-no-sex-no-food-law-for-shiite-women-goes-into-effect.html

[lx]http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inJDPJiXU9k0tYQetNGUhTCNqAcgD9F66BTO0

[lxi] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwyT06pTLUY

[lxii] http://www.campaignforequality.info/english/spip.php?article226

[lxiii] http://www.sign4change.info/english/spip.php?article707

[lxiv] The 2010 HBO documentary can be seen online. http://www.openculture.com/2010/06/for_neda_a_new_hbo_documentary.html

[lxv] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEI8RxFL7Zs&playnext=1&list=PL80B9486D39DDF01C&index=8

[lxvi] Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Infidel. Free Press, 2007. See also Fadumo Korn. Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2006. She also was the victim of female genital mutilation.

[lxvii] http://www.muslimhope.com/AishaNine

[lxviii] http://www.theahafoundation.org/

[lxix] www.aei.org/article/101759

[lxx] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128544048&ps=cprs

[lxxi] www.worldpulse.com/user/1235

[lxxii] Joint China Youth Daily Social Investigation Center and Qtick.com on-line survey of 5,521 singles, lady.qq.com/Translated and edited by womenofchina.cn) www.womenofchina.cn/Issues/Marriage_Family/218322.jsp

The researchers concluded that the Little Emperors are less emotionally mature than earlier generations and experience much work pressure to succeed.

[lxxiii] Feng Wang, “China’s One Child Policy at 30.”

www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0924_china_one_child_policy_wang.aspx

[lxxiv] http://www.womenofchina.cn/news/Spotlight/219948.jsp

[lxxv] Mark Mullen and Alex Johnson, “Chinese Women in No Hurry to Wed,” NBC News, October 16, 2007. Studies by Asian Women’s Forum, Peking University, and the All-China Women’s Federation. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/cleanprint/CleanPrintProxy.aspx?1275

[lxxvi] January 11, 2010 http://www.womenofchina.cn/Issues/Rights_Protection/215175.jsp

[lxxvii] Lisa Movius, “Cultural Devolution,” The New Republic, 1 March 2004. http://www.movius.us/articles/TNR-sexism-original.html

[lxxviii] March 26, 2009 http://www.echinacities.com/main/ChinaMedia/ChinaMediaInfo.aspx?n=1906&pageindex=2

[lxxix] July 9, 2010. /www.womenofchina.cn/Issues/OPINION/219545.jsp

[lxxx] http://www.womenofchina.cn/Data_Research/Latest_Statistics/218405.jsp

[lxxxi] Wei Hui. Shanghai Baby.  Constable & Robinson, 2001. A film of the same name came out in 2007.

[lxxxii] http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing15/index.html

[lxxxiii] http://www.unifem.org/attachments/products/CEDAWMadeEasy.pdf

[lxxxiv] http://www.20-first.com/1418-0-annual-global-gender-gap-report-released.html

[lxxxv] http://www.thelocal.se/28968/20100913/

[lxxxvi] Mian Ridge, May 11, 2010

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0511/Some-Indian-villages-prefer-to-put-women-in-power/(page)/2

[lxxxvii] Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Alfred a. Knopf, 2009, p. 197.

Women’s Campaign International coaches grassroots activists about how to achieve their goals and run for office.

[lxxxviii] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0511/Some-Indian-villages-prefer-to-put-women-in-power/(page)/2

[lxxxix] Rita Banerji, www.ritabanerji.com

The 50 Million Missing Campaign http://50millionmissing.wordpress.com/

[xc] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women’s_suffrage

[xci] Lynn Harris, “Female Heads of State.” Glamour Magazine, November 1, 2010.  http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2010/female-heads-of-state

[xcii] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs  (DESA), June 2010, p. 27. unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un…/unpan039616.pdf

[xciii] Deborah Solomon, “Questions for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, New York Times Magazine, August 23, 2009.

[xciv] Lynn Harris, “Female Heads of State.” Glamour Magazine, November 1, 2010.  http://www.glamour.com/women-of-the-year/2010/female-heads-of-state

[xcv] Michelle Nichols, “Share of Female Lawmakers Hits New Global High, March 1, 2007

[xcvi] United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report, June 15, 2010, p. 25.

[xcvii] Helen Clark comments about the impact of women in government. http://content.undp.org/go/newsroom/2010/march/helen-clark–international-womens-leadership-conference.en;jsessionid=axbWzt…?categoryID=593043&lang=en

[xcviii] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901040927-699350,00.html

[xcix] “Gender Equality Universally Embraced, But Inequalities Acknowledged,” July 1, 2010. http://pewglobal.org/2010/07/01/gender-equality/

[c] Young People Facing the Future: An International Survey. Foundation Pour L’Innovation Politique, directed by Anna Stellinger, p. 31. An email survey of 17,000 people aged 16 to 29 in 17 countries in 2007.

[ci] 500 women aged 18-29 Willow Bay, March 23, 2007, Huffington Post www.huffingtonpost.com/willow-bay/what-a-generation-y-woman_b_44132.html. Similar findings were reported in http://www.bpwfoundation.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5886

[cii] P. 157 Benjamin Gardner

[ciii] *The New York Times honored Kinkri Devi, an illiterate lowest caste woman, who successfully fought illegal mining in the Himalayas.

*In Afghanistan, Habiba Sarabi was the first minister for women’s affairs.

*In Burma, elected leader Aung San Su Kyi has lived for years under military house arrest until 2010[ciii]

*A woman lawyer in Yemen is helping young girls get divorced from their older husbands, including helping a 10-year-old girl divorce in 2008 when her 30-year-old husband wanted her to have sex with him.

*The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of 10 books, has sold 14 million copies worldwide, and was made into an HBO TV series. It features Precious Ramotswe, the first woman detective in Botswana. (The author, Alexander McCall Smith, taught university in Botswana.)

*Emphasizing the importance of women’s issues as an international agenda, President Obama appointed Melanne Verveer as ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues in March, 2009.  This position is the first of its kind in the US.

*The UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women will be referred to as UN Women, starting in 2011.

[civ] Hester Eisenstein. Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World. Paradigm Publishers, 2009, p. 191

[cv] http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire/

[cvi] http://www.worldpulse.com/node/22251

[cvii] http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue23/banerji1.htm

[cviii] Ask Amy column on Feminist.com

Amy Richardson and Jennifer Baumgardner. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. 2000

Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards, and Winona LaDuke. Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism. 2004

Telling Young Lives: Portraits of Global Youth. Craig Jeffrey and Jane Dyson, Eds.

http://youth.developmentgateway.org/Community-Content.8631+M577427790d8.0.htmlSocial

[cix] The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and the Media. A 2005 study of G-rated movies and children’s TV. http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/research.php

[cx] rothenbergp@wpunj.edu

[cxi] Susan J. Douglas. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done. Times Books, 2010.

[cxii] Sandy Banks, “A Younger View of Feminism,” Los Angeles Times. April 20, 2009.

[cxiii] April 1, 2007, New York Times article on “Amazing Girls.”

Amanda Robb, “The New Girls.” O magazine, May 2004.

[cxiv]http://www.trentarthur.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1053%3Aonslaught-of-the-dove&Itemid=100002

[cxv] Lisa Movius, “Cultural Devolution,” The New Republic, 1 March 2004. http://www.movius.us/articles/TNR-sexism-original.html

[cxvi] Guy Garcia. The Decline of Men. Harper Perennial, 2008.

[cxvii] Hanna Rosin, “The End of Men,” The Atlantic Magazine, July 2010.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/