Some of the Worst Countries for Women

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Girls get just five years of formal education before going to work. They are four times more likely than men to contract HIV.

HAITI: Nearly 50 percent of women in the capital's shantytown, Cité Soleil, have beensexually assaulted - not surprising when you consider that rape was criminalized only three years ago.

NEPAL: The female literacy rate is at 35 percent; if girls aren't married off in their teens, there's a good chance they'll be sold by their families to sex traffickers.

SIERRA LEONE: This is the worst place to be a woman, according to the Human Development Report. Only 24 percent of women are literate, and one in eight die during pregnancy or childbirth. Life expectancy is 43.

AFGHANISTAN: A woman dies during childbirth every half-hour, the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. Domestic violence is endemic; 87 percent of Afghan women have been assaulted by a family member.

From: Marie Claire

Women's Suffrage

Suffragists marching down 5th Avenue in 1917_____________

I recently noticed an article in Science magazine that suggested people's feelings about equality were determined in part by how wealth was distributed. So if you were a male who lived in a place where males inherited and kept family wealth you would essentially grow up figuring that was normal. Like Nietzche and his Master/Slave idea - if you were on the master side - you may likely find a way to justify that (as he did) while those on the powerless side would more than likely find fault with the unequal set-up.

I have a set of 1911 Encyclopedia Britannicas (this volume has also been posted online). I was noticing the section on "Women". It discusses the rights and lack there-of of women. In 1910, mothers were responsible for support of any illegitimate children up to the age of 16, while fathers of legitimate children had custody rights unless the father's were guilty of some sort of misconduct. Women were prevented from inheriting real estate if there were any male heirs. Husbands could get divorced if their wives had sex outside of marriage, but women could not if their husbands did, unless the husband was also cruel or deserted them.

Being written in 1910, women's suffrage was a hot topic. A Quaker by the name of Anne Kent of Chelmsford is credited with starting up the "Sheffield Female Political Association" - getting the movement off the ground in England in the 1850s. Soon after, Lydia Ernestine Baker created the "Englishwoman's Journal". There was agitation to change laws relating to married women's property and earnings. Some also fought for the rights of unmarried working women. (In The USA, the first woman's suffrage convention was held in 1848 in Seneca Fall, NY with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright and Lucretia Mott (Wright and Mott and many others in the group were "radical Quakers"). Here, again, property rights were part of the issue.)

John Stuart Mill was known for making Women's Suffrage an Election issue in England. He is also known for his book, "The Subjection of Women." He was a proponent of individual rights over state rights, including the rights of people who were then slaves, as well as the rights of women (while others were arguing that women and blacks were inferior). Mills idea of utilitarianism has been called the "greatest-happiness principle" - that people should act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Early in his career he was a free-market economist - but refined his ideas and became more socialist in outlook. Mills recognized the problem of the tyranny of the majority.

The Britannica article about women suggested as an example of the argument against women's suffrage A.V. Dicey's 1909 article ""Woman's Suffrage" in Quarterly Review (can be found online). Dicey argued that women getting the vote would be bad for Great Britain. He was afraid women would vote against the interests of the empire. He didn't think women had the education or judgement to vote. He was afraid it would lead to women having equal rights. Dicey was also worried that with women getting the vote, that all men would also get the vote. So instead of the vote being cast by male property owners (app. 7,000,000), it would be open to 20,000,000-24,000,000 people. The power of the then current voters would be drastically diminished.

Dicey also did not recognize that men and women might have different interests or concerns.

Dicey, of course, is a prime example of someone with disproportionate power who wanted to maintain the inequality that favored himself. John Stuart Mill would also have benefitted from inequality, but he is an example of someone who can see what is truly the best course of action to take, as opposed to that which is merely the best for himself and those with his education and status. He was also able to see and understand that there is value in the natural world and that unlimited growth of industry, etc. would result in the destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life.


There were, of course, various anti-suffrage groups such as the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League which submitted a petition to the English Parliament in 1907 with 87,500 names against women's suffrage, but it was discovered to be fraudulent. The Catholic Encyclopedia c. 1912 recommended that Catholics support the anti-suffrage movement. As the 1911 Britannica states, "Though Christianity and a broadening of men's theories of life tended to raise the moral and social status of women, yet Paul definitely assigns subservience as the proper function of women, and many of the fathers looked upon them mainly as inheriting the temptress function of Eve."

It is no coincidence that Quakers who are non-hierarchical in their religious practices have been more likely to push for social changes addressing equal rights for all, as opposed to people of other denominations that maintain a rigid hierarchy and male dominance. Elizabeth Cady Stanton found organized Christianity to be too sexist and she would not participate. She was more radical than even the "radical Quakers."

The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear — is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself [...].

- Elizabeth Cady Stanton's final appearance before members of the United States Congress in 1892. She died in 1902.


In England, women over the age of 30 got the vote in 1918; providing they were householders, married to a householder or if they held a university degree. Universal suffrage for all adults over 21 years of age was not achieved until 1928. In the USA, women got the right to vote in 1920. This November's election marks a mere 90 years that women have the right to vote in the US.

Some contemporary women leaders include (from an article in Time): Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia; Johanna Sigurdardottir, Prime Minister of Iceland; Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President of Argentina; Dalia Grybauskaite, President of Lithuania; Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Sheik Hasina Wajed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia; Tarja Halonen, President of Finland; Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago; Laura Chinchilla, President of Costa Rica

"Masters of the Uterus"

— By Elizabeth Gettelman in MotherJones.com

A timeline of controlling birth ...

c. 1500 BC Genesis describes how God kills Onan after he "wasted his seed on the ground" during coitus interruptus. (See "Thou Shalt Not Spill.")

c. 1500 BC Egyptian experts suggest mixing ground dates, acacia bark, and honey as a spermicide and crocodile dung as an anti-pregnancy suppository.

100 Greek gynecologist Soranus recommends that women hold their breath and jump backward seven times after sex to prevent pregnancy. Sneezing also advised.

c. 700 Muhammad endorses withdrawal during sex.

1000 Contraception gets medieval: European women wear bones from the right sides of black cats around their necks to avoid pregnancy.

1554 John Calvin calls masturbation "monstrous" and withdrawal "doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring."

1727 In "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom," Daniel Defoe compares contraception to infanticide.

1789 In his memoirs, Casanova describes prophylactics known as "English riding coats" and a lemon-rind diaphragm.

1798 The Reverend Thomas Malthus advocates the "temporary unhappiness" of abstinence to slow down population growth.

1832 Dr. Charles Knowlton is arrested in Massachusetts for publishing information about contraception. His defense: "Mankind ought not to abstain."

1839 Barrier-method contraceptives like condoms and diaphragms are revolutionized by Charles Goodyear's invention of vulcanized rubber.

1861 First condom ad (for Dr. Powers' French Preventative) in the New York Times: "Those who have used them are never without them."

1869 Pope Pius IX (right) bans abortion, saying the soul is born at conception.

1870s Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other feminists promote "voluntary motherhood," advocating abstinence as the best form of birth control.

1873 Postal inspector Anthony Comstock crusades against "obscenity" such as birth control. The Comstock Act, which prohibits mailing contraceptives or information about them, remains in effect until 1965.

1914 Margaret Sanger's pro-contraception tract The Woman Rebel is banned as obscene under the Comstock Act. Sanger (left) coins the term "birth control" later that year. In the 1930s, she becomes a eugenicist.

1917-18 18,000 STD-ridden doughboys take sick; US military distributes condoms.

1920s Contraceptives sold as "feminine hygiene" products. Douching with Lysol promoted as a way "to help protect your married happiness."

1930 Anglican Church becomes the first to approve of birth control that is "in the light of Christian principles." Six months later, Pope Pius XI deems birth control a "grave sin."

1933 Nazi Germany outlaws abortion and bans contraceptive ads. 400,000 Germans labeled "inferior" undergo forced sterilization.

1936 A federal appeals court rules that doctors can send contraceptives through the mail.

1937 The American Medical Association recognizes birth control as a legitimate part of a doctor's practice.

1952 John D. Rockefeller III, father of four, founds the Population Council: "Our concern is for the quality of human life, not the quantity of human life."

1959 President Eisenhower says promoting birth control "is not a proper political or governmental activity." He changes his mind 9 years later: "Governments must act...Failure would limit the expectations of future generations to abject poverty and suffering."

1960 FDA approves the pill.

1965 The Supreme Court rules in Griswold v. Connecticut that contraceptive bans violate the "right to marital privacy." Unmarried peoples' right to privacy isn't recognized until 1972.

1966 Papal commission on birth control votes to allow contraception, but Pope Paul VI keeps ban in place.

1967 Black Power Conference denounces the birth control pill as "black genocide."

1973 Contraceptive use in the US peaks, with 70% of married women 15 to 44 using some form.

1973 Building off privacy right affirmed by Griswold, Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion. Helms Amendment (still in effect) bans US funding of abortion abroad.

1974 Henry Kissinger advocates restricting food aid to poor nations to curb their growth.

1976 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi forces millions of poor men to be sterilized.

1979 China introduces its "one child" policy, leading to compulsory birth control and abortions.

1988 China is the first country to license mifepristone as an abortion pill. In 2000, the FDA approves it as RU-486.

1991 Ten days after Magic Johnson says he has HIV, Fox airs the nation's first condom ad.

1993 Female condom fails to catch on, in part because it's too noisy. Quieter version released in 2009.

1993 The Netherlands requires sex ed and promotes going "Double Dutch"—using both the pill and condoms.

1999 FDA approves prescription emergency contraceptive Plan B.

2008 Federal funding for abstinence-only sex ed hits $214 million. Teen pregnancy rate rises after a 15-year decline.


The Pill's 50th Birthday Party

"Global Women: Good News, Bad News"

From the Nation - by Katha Pollitt

And the winner is... Iceland! According to the 2009 Global Gender Gap report of the World Economic Forum, the land of glaciers and puffins, population 319,000, is the most gender egalitarian country on earth, with women having closed 80 percent of the gap with men. Finland (2), Norway (3), Sweden (4) and Denmark (7) are in the top ten too, as is New Zealand (5). You could try harder, Spain (17) and Germany (12)--in 2007 you were in the top ten. And O, Canada: 25. Very sad.

The WEF measures the gap between women and men in four areas--economic activity, education, health and political representation--regardless of the absolute level of resources. Thus South Africa (6) and Lesotho (10) make the top ten, despite widespread poverty, illiteracy and a raging AIDS epidemic. The way the WEP measures the gap is a bit strange. Among the items not measured are reproductive rights (abortion is banned in Ireland (8), and the Philippines (9), where birth control is also hard to find, so how equal is that?); sexual violence (South Africa has the world's highest rate of reported rape); and legal inequality, to say nothing of cultural practices like forced marriage, child marriage and female genital mutilation, and the disproportionate effect of poverty on women...

Protracted struggle is the theme of the UN's Beijing Plus 15 conference, taking place in New York as I write. For example, equal access to education was a key goal of the 1990 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and, as the WEF report found, real progress has been made--in many countries, females now outnumber males in schools and universities. But education is no magic bullet. As Mario Osava writes, "females represent a majority at every level of education in Brazil, and the average rate of schooling among Brazilian women is more than one year higher than that of men. Yet women continue to earn 30 percent less than men for the same work, and they occupy a mere 56 of the 594 seats in the Brazilian Congress."

What's the lesson for the United States? Wealth helps, but it's not enough. It's not automatic that as a country becomes richer and more developed men and women become more equal--especially when conservative religion has power, as in the United States and many nations. To an unusual degree, Americans resist "government" solutions to women's inequality as an affront to meritocracy and individual initiative. But without paid parental leave and a reliable system of quality childcare, women will never be able to get much further toward workplace equality than they are now. Scandinavia's extensive and flexible system of support for parents, including single mothers, is one of the major reasons Scandinavia leads the world in gender equality. Similarly, countries with lots of women in parliament--Rwanda is first, with 56 percent--tend to have quota systems, at least at first. The United States seemed to recognize their efficiency and fairness when it supported quotas in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here at home? Hard to imagine.

"In Europe, Women Finding More Seats at the Table"

From The New York Times

As the homeland of strong female figures, from former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland to the character Nora in “A Doll’s House,” Norway seemed the natural place for a law requiring companies to fill 40 percent of corporate board seats with women by 2008.

The country has met the goal since the law’s passage in 2003, in part through the efforts of people like Elin Hurvenes, the founder of the Professional Board Forum, which helps women meet the institutional and wealthy investors who have a say when it comes to picking Norway’s boards.

Some companies have embraced the change. Domstein, a seafood company that never had a woman on its board, named Hanne Refsholt, the chief executive of Norway’s largest cooperative dairy, as its chairman.

But Ms. Hurvenes said it never would have happened without the penalties that threatened to shut companies down if they did not comply. In 1993, women held 3 percent of corporate board seats; in 2002, it was 6 percent. “If organic growth is 3 percent every 10 years,” Hurvenes said, “it would have taken 100 years to get to 40 percent.”

For women eager to gain a seat in the boardroom, the good news from Norway and elsewhere in Europe is that a growing number of companies are searching for women with qualifications, talent and tact to serve as outside, or nonexecutive, directors.

“The general consensus today is that diversity is very good,” said Krister Svensson, who runs CMi, a mentoring program in Brussels for executives preparing to be directors or chief executives. This year Mr. Svensson has five women in his nonexecutive director mentoring program; last year he had none.

There is, Mr. Svensson said, a new paradigm for corporate governance: “If you have 12 gray-haired men average age 65 on a board, they tend to think about business prospects and strategy from the same perspective. But if you put a 45-year-old from a hot company and a woman and an international representative on the board, the quality of the debate will deepen.”...

But the reality is that the proportion is still small. Specialists say it is constrained by the small number of women who have reached the so-called corner suite level, as well as a deep-rooted desire to preserve traditional male networks and the chemistry and comfort level that go with them.

That is why Norway’s five-year process has raised expectations among women seeking board seats throughout Europe.

Since women and men often network in different circles, Ms. Hurvenes’s company, sponsored by corporations like Norsk Hydro and Telenor, offered a forum for companies to meet women who were interested in filling board seats. Women are often less vocal about asking for a higher position, and Ms. Hurvenes encouraged them to use the contacts they made. She called the new law “the largest transfer of power to women since they got the vote.”

Now Norway’s initiative is being followed elsewhere. In Spain, the Socialist-dominated Parliament has passed legislation calling for 40 percent board participation by women by 2015, although so far it does not have the kind of enforcement measures that accompanied the Norwegian law...

One obstacle to appointing more women is a persistent preference among companies to have either sitting or retired chief executives on their boards.

“A sitting C.E.O. is perceived to have great value because he or she is facing the same issues and complexities at their own companies,” said Herminia Ibarra, a professor at Insead, the international business school with campuses in Singapore and Fontainebleau, France. “The number of women is restrained by the small number of people who have reached that level.”

For the candidates, snagging that first directorship, like making that first million, is the hardest. It usually requires not only qualifications, but strong recommendations from people on the board or in their network and creating a perception that one is a team player....

For women whose credentials do not automatically put them high on the list of director candidates, Ms. Ibarra of Insead suggested additional networking, writing articles and accepting speaking engagements to gain a higher profile.

"The Pope rules out feminist theology"

(Thanks to radical goddess thealogy...)

If the Pope et al. think that using gender neutral terms for God invalidates the religion - I hope more people move to a different religion.

The Vatican has cracked down on feminist interpretations of the liturgy, ruling that God must always be recognised as Our Father.

In a move designed to counter the spread of gender-neutral phrases, the Holy See said that anyone baptised using alternative terms, such as "Creator", "Redeemer" and "Sanctifier" would have to be re-baptised using the traditional ceremony.

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said yesterday: "These variations arise from so-called feminist theology and are an attempt to avoid using the words Father and Son, which are held to be chauvinistic."

Instead, it said that the traditional form of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" had to be respected.

The alternative phrases originated in North America and started to become popular only in the past few years.

The new phrases are particularly popular in the Church of England. It was recently reported that guidelines to bishops and priests advised them to avoid "uncritical use of masculine imagery".

The Catholic Church and the Church of England are split over feminist issues.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the Pope, met in Rome last year, but admitted that the ordination of women priests was a "serious obstacle" to closer ties.

The Pope, who wrote the latest ruling, has been a strong opponent of feminism in the Catholic Church.

In his book, The Ratzinger Report, he wrote: "I am, in fact, convinced that what feminism promotes in its radical form is no longer the Christianity that we know; it is another religion."...

"Liberal Denial: The Link Between Porno & War"

By Riane Eisler

Liberals often defend images of men chaining, whipping, torturing, and even killing women in the name of sexual pleasure as harmless exercises of free speech. At the same time, they strenuously object to war propaganda.

But if war propaganda is effective in dehumanizing members of "enemy" nations to make it possible for men to hurt, kill, and degrade other human beings -- as it clearly is -- why would images of women as merely body parts for male sexual use and abuse not have similar effects? Why, like other propaganda, would stories and images that dehumanize women not blind people to the reality of women's suffering? If linking sex with violence had no effect on behavior, why would savvy media professionals link sex with whatever they are trying to sell -- from cars to Coca-Cola -- to influence peoples' behavior?

Books such as Robert Jensen's recent Getting Off show that porno is really propaganda in an undeclared war against women. Many studies show that images linking sexual arousal with cruelty and violence desensitize men to rape and other gender violence. Even beyond this, porno dehumanizes women and perpetuates the notion that half our species is put on earth to be used, and abused, by the other half.

But the damage done by porno goes further. As Jensen points out, porno reflects cultural acceptance of cruelty. But porno itself makes cruelty acceptable.

Now what we're talking about here is pornography, not erotica. Erotica is about giving and receiving sexual pleasure. Pornography is about linking sexual arousal with the infliction or suffering of pain -- be it psychological or physical. Erotica (from Eros, the Greek god of love) is about sexual love. Pornography is about male control over women -- and even beyond this, about domination and violence as normal and fun.

Images that link sexual arousal with causing physical or psychological pain perpetuate repression and injustice across the board. They condition people to accept, and even want, relations of domination and submission enforced by violence.

It's time liberals come out of denial about pornography. It's time to stop kidding ourselves that linking sex with cruelty and violence has no real effect.

Chaining, whipping and even killing people in the name of sexual pleasure is sadism. But liberal groups like the ACLU still go to court to protect violent and degrading porno on the grounds of free speech. Of course, we want free speech. But there have always been legal limits to speech. The basis of libel and slander suits, for example, is that you can't use speech to vilify and harm others. Porno vilifies and harms women. And it harms us all. It's not accidental that the period leading up to the Iraq war coincided with the proliferation of degrading and violent porno. Social scientists have shown that a rise in images of sexual conquest and domination historically presage periods of repression and war.

What we're dealing with are old patterns. The fact is that the view that women are put on earth to service men is our inheritance from times when the "natural order" was the ranking of man over woman, man over man, race over race, religion over religion, and nation over nation.

Let's not fall for the fundamentalist Christian charge that pornography is part of the modern drift away from religion. We can see in Christian religious art the almost identical images of sexual sadism as in modern pornography. For example, we find these same images in the Church-commissioned religious art showing women accused of being witches sadistically tormented by Christian inquisitors.

It's high time to stand up against images sexualizing the degradation, humiliation, domination, torture, and even killing of women. It's time to ask why liberals who would run to court to ban images degrading members of a different race still think degrading members of a different sex is OK. It's time to admit that the subordination of women perpetuates the very conditions of repression and violence liberals abhor.

Free Soil Party

I noticed over at Women’s Space/The Margins that Heart is running for President on the Free Soil Party ticket. So that's cool. I hope she gets lots of publicity.

Feminists are basically marginalized - but the blog world has been great as far as people being able to connect and express a point of view that one doesn't see in the Corporate Media much. Anyone working to bring that point of view some light deserves our support. Good luck, Heart!

On Marriage...

From the blog: Radical Goddess Thealogy

“The word ‘marriage’ came from Latin maritare, union under the auspices of the Goddess Aphrodite-Mari.

"Because the Goddess’s patronage was constantly invoked in every aspect of marriage, Christian fathers were opposed to the institution.

"Origen declared, ‘Matrimony is impure and unholy, a means of sexual passion.’

"St. Jerome said the primary purpose of a man of God was to ‘cut down with an ax of Virginity the wood of Marriage.’

"St. Ambrose said marriage was a crime against God, because it changed the state of virginity that God gave every man and women at Birth….”

from Barbara Walker, Woman’s Encyclopedia, p. 585 and quoting from William Fielding, Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage, and Robert Briffault, The Mothers.

From Moondance:

"It wasn't until 1563 that the church declared that legal marriage required a priest's blessing. Thereafter, they refused to recognize common law marriages."