Almost 40 years ago in 1972 Time Magazine ran a special issue dedicated to assessing the status of women in the United States and the progress of the women’s liberation movement. It found little to be optimistic about. Now in 2009 another special women’s issue has been published with encouraging progress despite some lingering inequalities. Women have never before had such a wide array of opportunities such a supportive society or such a high quality of life.
Despite setbacks such as persistent gaps in income higher healthcare costs for women and prevailing ideas about traditional family roles in some parts of society progress for women has been achieved in our nation.
Women now make up the majority of students on college campuses and nearly half of all graduate degrees in fields such as medicine and law and are poised to take over more than half the workforce by the end of this year. Women have more choices regarding family sexuality and reproductive health than ever before.
Overwhelmingly the women surveyed were very happy with the opportunities available to them and the way they are valued and treated in our modern society. They feel safe in control of their lives and on the whole equal to the male gender.
Yet while we discuss the small differences that still persist here in the U.S. the equality issue for many women around the world raises much more startling issues. Though we must continue to improve conditions for women in our country we must also be concerned that the majority of the world’s female population isn’t so lucky. For them being born female is more like a curse.
Our concerns for better income and higher offices blur in comparison to the reality that for far too many women around the world life means perpetual subservience to societal structures and the will of their male counterparts and even being stripped of the fundamental security of their bodies and their lives.As the success of women causes our nation to wrangle over issues such as reproductive rights and working mothers many women in other parts of the world are never given the chance to make decisions regarding these issues.
In many parts of Latin America women are resigned to a life of poverty as they struggle to support and raise ever-growing families due to the stigma surrounding birth control usage and the “machismo” culture. Women in many Middle Eastern and North African countries are married off before they even reach puberty forced to become the wife (sometimes the second or third) of a much older man.
In places like Somalia many of these young girls will have undergone female genital mutilation sometimes called “female circumcision.” It’s a barbaric procedure that for the rest of a woman’s life makes each time her husband forces himself on her just as excruciating as the last forever robbing her of a very real part of her soul. In these cultures women have little or no recourse and no power in society to change their fate.
For some women their gender is nothing short of a premature death sentence. In many developing countries even becoming pregnant carries a startlingly high risk of mortality; in African countries such as Tanzania nearly 1 in every 100 births will result in the death of the mother due to inadequate health care and unsanitary conditions. In some areas in India Afghanistan and Pakistan (among other countries) disputes over marriage arrangements or fidelity often result in “bride burning” or mercy killings; more than 225000 women are estimated to die this way in India each year.
Women are the most vulnerable in impoverished and war-torn areas such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma where soldiers routinely violate and murder the women as they sweep through the villages. And in Africa and Asia the majority of people suffering and dying from HIV/AIDS are overwhelmingly women reaching 75 percent of the infected population in the former continent often due to rampant male infidelity and women’s lack of power within marriage to ensure safety.Fortunately many organizations do exist to combat these issues and movements have been started to bring light to these concerns and liberate suffering women. Many women enjoying the success that equality has brought them here in our country have committed time money or both to help others realize the same thing. Let us hope our generation will create a world in which the rest of the earth’s women will be concerned with a 23-percent wage gap instead of basic safety.