The Plight of Women

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.
"While the potential of women is recognized at the international
level," says World Health Organization director-general Margaret
Chan, "this potential will not be realized until conditions improve
often dramatically in countries and communities. Too many
complex factors, often rooted in social and cultural norms,
continue to hinder the ability of women and girls to achieve their
potential and benefit from social advances."



Markers of treatment:

Justice:
-Prevalence of early marriage
-Existence of laws preventing violence against women (domestic
violence, sexual harassment, marital rape)
-Prevalence of intimate partner physical violence
-Prevalence of intimate partner sexual violence
-Civil liberties: Ability of women to move freely outside of the
house
Level of womens access to bank loans
Level of womens access to land and property other than land
Whether inheritance practices favor male heirs


Health:
-Adolescent fertility rate (births per 1,000 women ages 15-19)
-Maternal mortality rate (maternal deaths per 100,000 live births)
-Contraceptive prevalence (percentage of women ages 15-49)
-Proportion of women with unmet need for family planning (aged
15-49)
-Proportion of women attended at least once by skilled health
personnel during pregnancy
-HIV incidence rate
-Proportion of women receiving antiretroviral drugs to prevent
mother-to-child transmission of HIV
-Number of unsafe abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44
-Whether abortion is legal:
To save womans life
To preserve physical health
To preserve mental health
In cases of rape/incest
In cases of fetal impairment
Economic or social reasons On request

Education:
-Female adult literacy rate
-Female youth literacy rate
-Percentage of female population over age 25 with no schooling
-Female survival rate to last grade of primary school
-Gender parity in enrollment in primary education
-Gender parity in enrollment in secondary education

Economics:
-Whether women can work in all industries
-Percentage of women in the labor force
-Womens wages as a percentage of mens
-Ability of women to rise to positions of enterprise leadership


Politics:

-Share of women in ministerial positions
-Percent of women in Parliament
-Percent of women in senior positions
-Ratio of female legislators, senior officials and managers
compared to male

BEST PLACE TO BE A WOMAN?


The best place to be a woman
Its Iceland, according to the World Economic Forums Global
Gender Gap report for 2012. The country has claimed the top spot
in the report since 2009. Finland, Norway and Sweden round out
the top four. (Canada fell three spots to land in 21st place out of
135 countries, one above the United States. What hurts us: the lack
of female politicians. The good news: Take a look at the premiers of
British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and
Labrador and Nunavut.)
Country with the smallest gender wage gap
Egypt, where the World Economic Forum says the gender wage gap
is 18 cents so women can expect to earn 82 cents for every dollar
a man gets.
(Canadian women, by comparison, can expect to earn about 73
cents, placing us 35th in the ranking.)

Country with the most female politicians
Rwanda. In the African country, as of February, women held 45 of
the 80 seats in Parliament. By comparison, in Canada, which ranks
45th in the Inter-Parliamentary Union study, men outnumber
women in Parliament by a ratio of 3 to 1. When it comes to women
in ministerial positions, that ratio also holds (27 per cent female to
73 per cent male).

Country where women live the longest
Japan, where women can expect to live 87 years, compared with
79.2 for men in the country. In Canada, the average life expectancy
for women is 82.8 years nearly five years longer than men. In
Afghanistan and Lesotho, the average girl won't live to see her 50th
birthday.

Country most friendly to female billionaires
China. According to a recent Forbes study, the Asian nation has a
uniquely high number of self-made women among its richest
citizens a trend the report credits, in part, to communism, which
forced gender equality, and created an attitude shift that guides
business today.
Best country to pass off the vacuuming to the man in the
house
Denmark. According to a study by the OECD, women in the
Scandanavian country (with the lucky female citizens of Sweden,
Norway and Finland following closely) do only about 50 minutes
more of unpaid labour a day than men. Compare that to women in
India, who are doing five hours more a day of unpaid labour than
their male counterparts. The significant gender gap is partly
because Indian women have less access to paid work, but the study
also noted that, Indian men also spend considerably more time
sleeping, eating, talking to friends, watching TV and relaxing.

Country with most women in the work force
Burundi. According the World Economic Forum, 92 per cent of
female citizens in Burundi have paid work compared with 88 per
cent of men. Canada ranks 20th. Pakistan scored the lowest on this
measure: In that country, men in paying jobs outnumber women 4
to 1.

Top country for women in positions of power
Jamaica, where there are more women than men serving as
legislators, officials or managers (59 per cent vs. 41 per cent,
according to the World Economic Forum). Canadian reality check:
We rank 31st, with 36 per cent women vs. 64 per cent men.
Best place to be a female engineer
Estonia. In this country, which offers significant tuition incentives to
draw high-school graduates into fields such as engineering, female
professional and technical workers outnumber men two to one 68
per cent compared to 32 per cent, according to the World Economic
Forum. Women make up 57 per cent of Canadas professional and
technical workers.

Safest place to have a baby
Estonia. According to country comparisons published by the CIA
World Factbook, the maternal mortality rate, which includes death
during pregnancy, childbirth, or 42 days after ending a pregnancy,
in Estonia is two deaths for every 100,000 births. In Canada, the
rate is 12 in 100,000 the same as the U.K. and Denmark. In
Chad, the most dangerous country, the rate is 1,100 in 100,000 live
births.
Best place to stay at home with your kids
Germany. German mothers get 14 weeks off at 100 per cent of
their wages. They collect a parental allowance of 67 per cent of
their wages for 14 months, and both parents have the option of
three years of parental leave in total. (In Canada, parents may take
52 weeks of maternity leave in total, receiving the equivalent of EI
for that period.)

Country with the most female Nobel laureates
The United States. In related news, the U.S. can also claim to the
most Miss Universe titles. Guess which achievement gets the most
attention? (Also, all of Canada's 21 Nobel prize winners have been
men.)
Best place to buy your daughter a celebrity magazine
Israel. Last year, Israel banned the use of underweight models in
local advertising, and passed a law requiring publications to disclose
when models have been edited to appear thinner than they really
are.

Country with the lowest rates of domestic violence
Georgia. According to a United Nations study in March of 2011, the
lifetime prevalence of sexual or physical abuse against a woman in
Georgia is 5 per cent. Canada comes second in a list of 86
countries, at 7 per cent. In Ethiopia, the rates of violence against
women by a partner is horrifically high: 71 per cent of women are
physically or sexually abused over the course of their lives.
According to the study, in the last 12 months that the statistics
were recorded, 44 per cent of Ethiopian women suffered sexual
abuse. The World Bank took a closer look at reasons why women
reported the abuse happened. In Niger, according to a 2006 survey,
44 per cent of women said they were beaten for burning dinner. In
2008, 41 per cent of women in Sierra Leone said they were beaten
by their husbands for refusing to have sex.

The land where women stay single the longest
French Polynesia. According to data collected by the World Bank,
Polynesian women don't get married, on average, until the age of
33. There were no figures available for many countries, but in both
Mali and Niger, a typical girl can expect to be married before her
18th birthday. In most industrialized nations, of course, the age of
first marriage keeps going up. In Canada, the average women ties
the knot at 29.

Top country to be a single mother
Norway. A Unicef study found that in the Scandanavian country,
only 4.1 per cent of children in single-parent families were deprived
of quality of life measures, including being able to heat their homes
properly, being able to afford a meal with meat every second day,
and manage unexpected expenses. The study placed Romania last.