Best Place to be a Woman
Toronto Star with the 10 best, 10 worst countries in which to be a woman.
BEST COUNTRIES TO BE A WOMAN
Measures of well-being include life expectancy, education, purchasing power and standard of living. Not surprisingly, the top 10 countries are among the world’s wealthiest.
Iceland Norway Australia Canada Ireland Sweden Switzerland Japan Netherlands France Here are 10 of the worst countries in the world to be a woman today:
• Afghanistan: The average Afghan girl will live to only 45 – one year less than an Afghan male. After three decades of war and religion-based repression, an overwhelming number of women are illiterate. More than half of all brides are under 16, and one woman dies in childbirth every half hour. Domestic violence is so common that 87 per cent of women admit to experiencing it. But more than one million widows are on the streets, often forced into prostitution. Afghanistan is the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than that of males.
• Democratic Republic of Congo: In the eastern DRC, a war that claimed more than 3 million lives has ignited again, with women on the front line. Rapes are so brutal and systematic that UN investigators have called them unprecedented. Many victims die; others are infected with HIV and left to look after children alone. Foraging for food and water exposes women to yet more violence. Without money, transport or connections, they have no way of escape.
• Iraq: The U.S.-led invasion to “liberate” Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls. The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more are unable to earn enough to eat.
• Nepal: Early marriage and childbirth exhaust the country’s malnourished women, and one in 24 will die in pregnancy or childbirth. Daughters who aren’t married off may be sold to traffickers before they reach their teens. Widows face extreme abuse and discrimination if they’re labelled bokshi, meaning witches. A low-level civil war between government and Maoist rebels has forced rural women into guerrilla groups.
• Sudan: While Sudanese women have made strides under reformed laws, the plight of those in Darfur, in western Sudan, has worsened. Abduction, rape or forced displacement have destroyed more than 1 million women’s lives since 2003. The janjaweed militias have used systematic rape as a demographic weapon, but access to justice is almost impossible for the female victims of violence.
• Other countries in which women’s lives are significantly worse than men’s include Guatemala, where an impoverished female underclass faces domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies left with hate messages.
In Mali, one of the world’s poorest countries, few women escape the torture of genital mutilation, many are forced into early marriages, and one in 10 dies in pregnancy or childbirth.
In the tribal border areas of Pakistan, women are gang-raped as punishment for men’s crimes. But honour killing is more widespread, and a renewed wave of religious extremism is targeting female politicians, human rights workers and lawyers.
In oil-rich Saudi Arabia, women are treated as lifelong dependents, under the guardianship of a male relative. Deprived of the right to drive a car or mix with men publicly, they are confined to strictly segregated lives on pain of severe punishment.
In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a vicious civil war has put women, who were the traditional mainstay of the family, under attack. In a society that has broken down, women are exposed daily to rape, dangerously poor health care for pregnancy, and attack by armed gangs.
The United States, surprisingly, doesn’t make either list. Surely someone must think this is the worst place to be a woman. But you’ll be pleased to note that the atrocious treatment of women by some Iraqi men has been recognized as our fault. Women under Baathist secularism reportedly did have some advantages over women in other Arab countries. As long as they didn’t catch Saddam’s or Uday’s eye, or need to be gang-raped or murdered in front of their husbands, or have to bulldozed into a mass grave, that kind of thing.
Iceland caps the “best” list. I’m not sure I’d put Iceland at the top of any list for the best place to be anything, too far north for my taste. The list pretty much presumes first and foremost it’s better to be a socialist woman. Australia? The blokes must be making their own Vegemite sandwiches these days. Japan’s a little bit of a surprise. Maybe because they have separate trains to keep the men from groping them. France … it has to be the fashion. And all the romantic guys. Enchanté, you know. The Pepe Le Pew thing.
Speaking of France, women, the oolala may not be all its cracked up to be, Instapundit reports.
In this hell for women we call America, Dr. Helen reports women outearn the men in one-third of all marriages.
Here’s someone else who didn’t make either list. Maybe they don’t want to call attention to him. The U.S. might try to “liberate” and imprison all those Iranian women in an inferno.
Yet another women’s paradise that was slighted:
Pyongyang, March 8 (KCNA) — General Secretary Kim Jong Il enjoyed together with women officials an art performance given in celebration of the International Women’s Day.
When Kim Jong Il appeared in the auditorium, the audience enthusiastically welcomed him with profound thanks as he has trained the women of the DPRK as genuine mistresses of the revolution and construction and enabled them to enjoy a worthwhile life and happiness.
He warmly congratulated the women officials on the day and extended warm greetings to them who have rendered devoted services for the prosperity of the country and the accomplishment of the revolutionary cause of Juche.
Colorful numbers were staged by the artistes of the State Symphony Orchestra and the State Merited Chorus, both prestigious art troupes.
Greatly satisfied with the splendid performance reflecting the faith and will of the DPRK and pervaded with the revolutionary soldier spirit given by them, he expressed expectation and belief that all artistes would conduct dynamic revolutionary performing activities to instill immense strength and courage into the Party members and other working people speeding up their general advance to greet the 60th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK as a great festival of victors.
Topics: women
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:33 pm on Sunday, March 9, 2008
8 Responses to “Best Place to be a Woman”
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March 10th, 2008 at 12:09 am
“The literacy rate, once the highest in the Arab world, is now among the lowest …”
Total nonsense. The Baathists claimed that their population was literate, but (big surpise), that was just Baathist propaganda, dutifully repeated by various U.N. agencies. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, the Baathists were claiming that 84% of males and 64 % of females were literate (as reported by UNICEF). Once the Baathists were driven out, and people who were actually interested in finding out what the literacy rate REALLY was could get into Iraq to conduct literacy tests, it was discovered that the actual rates are more like 56% male and 24% female (as reported by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).
In point of fact, Iraq is, and WAS, one of the least literate Arab nations.
P.S. When the communist government of Cuba finally falls, I predict you will see a similar event. Much of the population of Cuba, which is now nearly 100% literate, will miraculously forget how to read and write.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:29 am
A nice point about which I was ignorant, Dave.
Give me America every time, even though I’m a lowly female type woman. One of the main things that keeps the place from perfection is all those feminists who bitch incessantly about how oppressed they are. Those are the broads who ought to go spend some time in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.
There is a problem, as well, with middle-aged women who have nothing better to do than expose their sagging breasts because they are not articulate enough to express their notions in actual language. I’m hoping they will all die off soon.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Interestingly, the Star uses the UNDP gender-related development index rankings for their list of the best places to be a woman, but uses their own arbitrary list for the worst.
The UNDP rankings for the worst are…
168 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)
169 Ethiopia
170 Chad
171 Central African Republic
172 Mozambique
173 Mali
174 Niger
175 Guinea-Bissau
176 Burkina Faso
177 Sierra Leone
Personally, I suspect that the Star used their own arbitrary list so that they could include two nations that the United States has intervened in as being the worst (thanks to our evil interventions, of course), and also so that they wouldn’t have to say that the worst countries on earth for anyone to live in are all in Africa.
The United States ranks # 12, btw.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:04 am
Can’t believe the US didn’t make it into the bottom 10. Clearly, this is not a UN study.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:44 am
I guess it’s not gang rape when the young Swedish women are attacked by the jihadis. The incidence of rape in Sweden is increasing rapidly regardless of what the UN and The Star think. Are they saying that makes it better?
March 10th, 2008 at 9:05 am
“The U.S.-led invasion to “liberate” Iraq from Saddam Hussein has imprisoned women in an inferno of sectarian violence that targets women and girls.”
Notice the scare quotes around “liberate.” Hmm. Sounds like standard leftist boilerplate to me. And I wonder about targeting women and girls. Seems to me AQ and its allies and stooges have higher-priority targets who are characterized by wearing uniforms. I expect you learn otherwise, however, in the women’s studies departments of the liberal democracies. Incidentally, does Canada have more smug lefties per capita than any other country? Their national compulsion to find their importance in the degree to which they are anti-American really is tiresome.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
[...] Crittenden has the list of 10 places women should stay the heck out of. I would add any place that has UN blue helmets. They rape [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
As an Irishman I’m surprised to see us making it into the top 10. Listening to some of the feminist drivel spewed out over here you’d think Irish women were living in Afghanistan-like conditions.
Maybe a couple of weeks holidaying with their sisters in the Mid East might help them relax their bitter little agendas……..but I doubt it somehow.