The state of the world on Mother's Day
[i-Hurricane Ike]
Save the Children’s eleventh annual Mothers’ Index compares the well-being of mothers and children in 160 countries.
Norway, Australia, Iceland and Sweden top the rankings this year. The top 10 countries attain very high scores for mothers’ and children’s health, educational and economic status. Afghanistan ranks last among the surveyed countries. Seven from 10 bottom-ranked countries are from sub-Saharan Africa. The United States places 28th.
Conditions for mothers and their children in the bottom 10 countries are grim. On average, 1 in 23 mothers will die from pregnancy-related causes. One child in 6 dies before his or her fifth birthday, and 1 child in 3 suffers from malnutrition. Nearly 50 percent of the population lack access to safe water and only 4 girls for every 5 boys are enrolled in primary school.
The gap in availability of maternal and child health services is especially dramatic when comparing Norway and Afghanistan. Skilled health personnel are present at virtually every birth in Norway, while only 14 percent of births are attended in Afghanistan.
A typical Norwegian woman has more than 18 years of formal education and will live to be 83 years old. Eighty-two percent are using some modern method of contraception, and only 1 in 132 will lose a child before his or her fifth birthday.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, in Afghanistan, a typical woman has just over 4 years of education and will live to be only 44. Sixteen percent of women are using modern contraception, and more than 1 child in 4 dies before his or her fifth birthday. At this rate, every mother in Afghanistan is likely to suffer the loss of a child.
On the children’s well-being portion of the Mothers’ Index, Sweden finishes first and Afghanistan is last out of 166 countries. While nearly every Swedish child – girl and boy alike – enjoys good health and education, children in Afghanistan face a 1 in 4 risk of dying before age 5. Thirty-nine percent of Afghan children are malnourished and 78 percent lack access to safe water. Only 2 girls for every 3 boys are enrolled in primary school. (Full report)
Picture courtesy Logan Abassi(MINUSTAH)
Afghan Women: The struggle goes on...
I worked in Afghanistan before the war, and went back into the country right after the Taliban left Kabul.
All in all, I spent quite a few months working with Afghan men and women, and got to appreciate them as people. They had been through hell in the decennia before the war, and when Western forces "liberated them from the Taliban", their hopes were high to have peace at last.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Today, the insecurity and repression of individuals is probably even more precarious than during the Taliban times. Even more so for the women.
When I flew into Kabul two days after the Taliban left, I saw on Western TV station how news bulletins were announcing that the women finally threw off their burkas, I looked out of the window and saw no changes.
I left Afghanistan late 2002, and according to this video, things only got worse for Afghan women...
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Discovered via One Peaceful World
Quiz: 5 questions on the economic status of women
[i-women in Bangladesh]
How many of the following key questions can you answer?
1. Which country has the most professionally employed women?
At the bottom, we find Niger, Pakistan, Bahrain, Malawi, Chad, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Note: We only considered paid employment, and excluded the agricultural sector.
2. In which country do we find the most female legislators, senior officials and managers?
This means the Philippines is the only country in the world with more women as senior professionals than men.
3. Where do women earn the highest wages?
On #2 we find Norway (US$33,034), then the US (US$30,581), Iceland (US$27,496) and Denmark (US$27,048).
The UK comes on the 12th place (US$24,448).
At the bottom, we find Sierra Leone, Yemen, DRC, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi and Eritrea.
4. Which country has the smallest difference between the income for men and women?
The best balanced (or least of the worse) is Kenya, where women's income is 17% lower than men's. Runner-ups are Mozambique and Sweden (19% lower), Burundi (22%) and Norway (25%).
The UK is on the 29th place (35% lower).
You have to look way down to find the US, by the way: 46th place where the income of women is 38% less than for men.
5. In which country are women the largest workforce?
Are you ready? Here we go....
In Burundi 91.8% of the production workforce are women. Close runner ups are Tanzania (86%), Malawi (85.2%), Mozambique (84.7%) and Rwanda (80.4%).
In the US, 59.6% of the production work force are female, and in the UK 55%. Down at the bottom, you have OPT (Palestine) with 10.3%, Saudi Arabia (17.3%)and Egypt (20.1%). Again, that EXCLUDES household work... If we included it, the figures would have been worse!
So.. what's your score?
More on The Road about emancipation, discrimination,and women.
Source: OECD - organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, discovered via WikiGender - a site with a weath of information on gender issues.
Picture courtesy Shehzad Noorani (WFP) Read the full post...
International Women's Day - Raise hope for the women in Congo
Today, March 8th is International Women's Day. While in the past decennia we witnessed a significant change in attitude both in women's and society's opinion about women's equality and emancipation, there are still places in the world where women suffer greatly.
One of those is Eastern DRC where women are systematically raped as a war strategy between warring fractions. Used as a weapon of war, sexual violence and rape exist on a scale seen nowhere else in the world.
Often successful in its intent to destroy and exterminate, rape is causing the destruction of women, their families, and their communities. While Congo’s women are the backbone of their society, efforts to protect women and girls in the Congo are failing spectacularly.
Here is a video from a shelter for women, victims of sexual assault, in Bukavu in DRC.
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The video was produced by Raise Hope For Congo, a movement aiming to protect and empower Congolese women and girls. You can help them, and the women of Congo by raising awareness and rolling up your sleeves with a toolkit they provide.
Rumble: A woman arriving at Jeddah airport
An extract from CarpetBlog, an excellent blog by a lady living in Turkey.
She describes what happened when arriving at Jeddah Airport (Saudi Arabia):
| Carpet blogger's picture[i-Carpet blogger's picture]This place looks normal on the outside, but it so clearly is not. Social codes and cues for women are impossible to interpret without assistance. Where can we go? What can we do? What do we do if we run into trouble? What kind of trouble could we run into? Will we be able to recognize the trouble when it comes our way? Some trouble is screamingly obvious. We recognized it immediately when we arrived in Jeddah at midnight, after our passport was taken away. "Where is your brother?" snapped passport control. "I'm sorry. What?" "Your brother. He is picking you up?" "Uh, no. The hotel is picking me up." "Not acceptable." Like a naughty child, we were told to sit next to half-naked Nigerian hajis while arrangements were made to accommodate a rogue foreign woman without a brother. Our resentment brewed, but remained unexpressed. The problem resolved itself, with no intervention from us, and we departed the arrivals hall two hours later, with our brother, the hotel driver. |
More on The Road about emancipation and Saudi Arabia
Picture courtesy CarpetBlog. Read the full post...
News: Nov 25 - International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
drc civil war congo[i-drc civil war congo]
Violence against women is largely unreported. Fear and stigma often prevent women from reporting incidents of violence or seeking assistance.
55 to 95% of women who have been physically abused by their partners have never contacted the police, aid groups or shelters.
Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, motor accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data. (Details)
Since 9 years, November 25th has been declared "The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women", calling the world's attention to gender-based violence.
Over 1.3 million people signed the petition supporting the fight for this cause. Make your voice count, sign the petition now:
link[i-link]
Violence of women is also an issue of prevention from the ground up. Aid agencies have been working on better girls' education, and using food aid as a tool to help women out of extreme poverty. (Example)
Picture extracted from Michael's excellent article Congo: The Rape Capital of the World.
More on The Road about sexual violence and emancipation.
Rumble: The Girl Effect
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• Today, more than 600 million girls live in the developing world.
• More than one-quarter of the population in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa are girls and young women ages 10 to 24.
• The total global population of girls ages 10 to 24—already the largest in history—is expected to peak in the next decade.
• Approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school.
• Out of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls.
• One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15. 38 percent marry before age 18.
• One-quarter to one-half of girls in developing countries become mothers before age 18; 14 million girls aged 15 to 19 give birth in developing countries each year.
• 75 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV in Africa are female, up from 62 percent in 2001.
And yet:
• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
• An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.
• Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers.
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.
Source: The Girl Effect
News: 14,200 cases of rape. With only 287 court cases.
I wonder in which country one would accept a mass of 14,200 registered rape cases in two years, in one province only. Even worse: of which only 287 cases were taken to court. No-one would accept this, right? Right?
link[i-link]Well, this is the case in South Kivu, a province in Eastern DRC (Congo), according to the UN Human Rights Council. (Full)
Amnesty International reports tens of thousands of women and girls have suffered systematic rape and sexual assault since the devastating conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo began in 1998. Rape, sometimes by groups as large as twenty men, has become a hallmark of the conflict, with armed factions often using it as part of a calculated strategy to destabilize opposition groups, undermine fundamental community values, humiliate the victims and witnesses, and secure control through fear and intimidation. It is not unusual for mothers and daughters to be raped in front of their families and villages, or to be forced to have sex with their sons and brothers. Rapes of girls as young as six and women over 70 have been reported. Young girls are also regularly abducted and held captive for years to be used as sexual slaves by combatants and their leaders. (Full)
Help putting an end to violence against women. Sign up:
link[i-link]
Picture courtesy Kevin Sites. Source: International Aid Workers Today
News: International Women's Day. Yesterday. Noticed Anything?
link[i-link]March 8th was to celebrate International Women's Day. This event was hardly noticeable in the international press. A sign?
Some sad statistics:
- Women produce nearly 80% of the food on the planet, but receive less than 10% of agricultural assistance (iamapeacekeeper.com)
- More than 1 billion people live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day. 70% of people in abject poverty are women (kamilat.org)
- Only 1% of the world’s assets are in the name of a woman (unesco.org)
- Although women do two thirds of the work in the world, the rate of paid employment for women is two thirds that of men (ilo.org)
- There is no country in the world where women’s wages are equal to those of men (learningpartnership.org)
- Worldwide, when women do the same work as men, they are paid 30-40% less than men (newint.org)
Picture courtesy Shehzad Noorani (WFP). Source: WomanKind.org.uk. Read the full post...