image Michael Kamber
I recently happened upon an article written two years ago by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN of the New York Times called “A Women’s Crusade.”
Here at GMP we have been hotly debating the role of men, women, feminism, and men’s rights. I note that the debate has been focussed if not in terms of America at least in terms of the developed world (we seem to get a lot of interest from our friends in Australia, Canada, and across Europe among other places). But we really aren’t talking about gender in the developing world when we discuss, debate and fight over the roles of men and women in the 21st century.
Kristoff and WuDunn take the position that:
“IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.
Amartya Sen, the ebullient Nobel Prize-winning economist, developed a gauge of gender inequality that is a striking reminder of the stakes involved. “More than 100 million women are missing,” Sen wrote in a classic essay in 1990 in The New York Review of Books, spurring a new field of research. Sen noted that in normal circumstances, women live longer than men, and so there are more females than males in much of the world. Yet in places where girls have a deeply unequal status, they vanish. China has 107 males for every 100 females in its overall population (and an even greater disproportion among newborns), and India has 108. The implication of the sex ratios, Sen later found, is that about 107 million females are missing from the globe today. Follow-up studies have calculated the number slightly differently, deriving alternative figures for “missing women” of between 60 million and 107 million.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeGirls vanish partly because they don’t get the same health care and food as boys. In India, for example, girls are less likely to be vaccinated than boys and are taken to the hospital only when they are sicker. A result is that girls in India from 1 to 5 years of age are 50 percent more likely to die than boys their age. In addition, ultrasound machines have allowed a pregnant woman to find out the sex of her fetus — and then get an abortion if it is female.
The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.”
So my question is whether or not our gender discussion here at GMP about what is going on in the developed world has to be modified when we talk about the developing world?
A good video that goes with the story here.
There are significant differences between the two. The most obvious is that wealth and modern technology relieved women from many of the traditional gender burdens and gave women more choice in their lives. Equality is more of a first world middle class luxury rather than an achievable reality for impoverished agrarian societies.
Both have a certain gender stereotyping and biased portrayal of world issues. Some of which include the infamous quote that women are the greatest victims of war and neglecting male rape, child soldiers and slavery.
So let me get this straight, it’s “normal” for women to outlive men, but rampant misogyny when the reverse is true? They’re not even trying to hide it anymore… Back to the real topic here, I usually have mixed feelings when things like this come up. It’s certainly true that in many parts of the world, women really are disadvantaged in many ways, a point that cannot be ignored and has to be addressed. Women are primarily victims of sex slavery. Some health issues affect women/girls more so than men/boys. And of course there are issues of women actually having… Read more »
Women are primarily victims of sex slavery Do you know that in Afghanistan it is common for young boys to be used for sex by men because women are seen as too valuable? I guess I am wondering what evidence you have for the statement you made. It seems like most of the time when people “know” women are worse off it turns out what is really going on is that are selectively hearing stories about women victims but never about men victims. In other words we see these issues always through a distorting lense that favours faminism’s ideology. Don’t… Read more »
Too add to that, a friend of mine is currently working an internship dealing with sex trafficking in the United States, and according to him the gender divide in trafficked children is 60% female, 40% male. A difference, certainly, but not enough to describe any group as the “primary victims”. Speaking of people payed less for the same work (for better work, actually, statistically speaking), no one seems to have a problem with this being true of high functioning autistics, regardless of gender. It has been my consistent complaint against the feminist movement that their scholarship is sloppy. If you… Read more »
Interesting to think about where men fit in the women’s quest for fair treatment. I believe there is always a place for men in making the world a better, safer place. If the issue is women need to be empowered to speak with their unique voices then men have the role of keeping them safe while they do it. Men can use their power to make the space for women to speak.
What an odd statement.
Are women going to do anything to make a space for men to speak?
Well I will.
Do my best at least.
There was an ongoing discussion about male patient modesty on another blog. http://patients.about.com/b/2011/06/19/men-and-modesty-and-medical-care-one-year-later.htm Trisha Torrey was shocked that many men said that they would rather die than submit to cross gender intimate care. Having been in a situation where I was probably drugged and probably had sex without the ability to consent (I have no memory so can’t say and the doubt is somewhat comforting) and having had the snot kicked out of me by eight guys, I can tell you emphatically that the physical beating was much easier to deal with. The effects of the beating wore off after… Read more »
“In addition, ultrasound machines have allowed a pregnant woman to find out the sex of her fetus — and then get an abortion if it is female.” This has also been the case in the United States, among some Asian American populations, where there are significantly more boys born than girls. This is one of the horrible ironies of reproductive rights – the power to terminate a pregnancy for misogynistic reasons. Counting aborted embryos and fetuses as victims of a genocide sounds quite anti-choice, actually. How do you square that circle? “The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far… Read more »
Interesting question….and thanks for discussing it….My parents were raised in Asia and even though I was born in the USA and rebelled majorly in my teens, unknowingly, I still retained my mother’s core beliefs about men and marriage: that men, who were potential providers were scarce and that you needed to grab one to have the access to the best things in life….at the same time, I was also getting the message that I should work hard and get my education and compete with people at the top….I received a lot of weird, sometimes contradictory messages about growing up and… Read more »
It should be said that the UN has already been trying to come up with a measure for gender inequality to compare one country with another. In fact here’s a pdf on how they went about doing it. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_1995_en_chap3.pdf It’s basically just as I said above. They take the measure of quality of life they always used and simply apply it to men and women separately. Simple. In estimating the GDI, a measure is constructed for the overall achievements of women and men in the three dimensions of the HDI-life expectancy, educational attainment, adjusted real income-after taking note of inequalities… Read more »
/DevilsAdvocate
If they can argue biological edge in life expectancy, can they argue male strength in jobs that require strength means men do more work per hour than a woman and thus should be paid more for roles when 1 gender has an advantage? If it’s natural that men are dying younger, what other natural differences are there?
Arguments from nature seem fundamentally flawed because humans do not accept what nature gives them. Even where humans fail to overcome nature’s edicts there is no reason to not count pain or disadvantage for one gender over the other as a result of nature that cannot be changed. Certainly feminists would never accept an argument that says women don’t suffer from abortion bans because it’s just nature, or because men are banned from having an abortion too and its just nature that creates a disparate impact. Nor would they discount the fact that most leaders are men because that is… Read more »
Sen noted that in normal circumstances, women live longer than men Ah “normal”. So the fact that men die younger than women isn’t a sign that women are better off. In fact it’s women who are suffering! Why? Because they are not living EVEN LONGER than they are beyond a man’s life span. That’s the real sexism not eg. the fact that women’s health has far more spent on it than men’s health does. That is unimportant and has no effect whatsoever on lifespan. Why would you think spending more money on health makes you live longer? No, no, no… Read more »
That statement jumped out at me, too.
Life expectancy is a product of all sorts of specific social, cultural, economic, and technological factors, just to name a few. It seems to be common in industrial and post-industrial societies that women live longer on average than men, but that is hardly common in human history.
It sounds ominous for someone to suggest that one gender is *supposed* to live longer than another. That sends a little chill down the spine. Should we increase the risks that men face, in order to return the world back to “normal”?
Thanks Eric helpful response
Shouldn’t the Good MEN Project be more concerned about a response to a Men’s Crusade???
Well I guess the answer is WE DON’T KNOW, but since nobody else is likely to let that get in the way of a good discussion why should I? Straight off I think you need to widen the discussion to include some other far away places we don’t know anything about (but where the feminist media pretends to know all the facts). Namely the past. What do the past and 3rd world countries have in common for feminists today? They are very easy to lie about. Think about it like this. These people are willing to just make up stuff… Read more »
This is what I have to say about it: http://www.genderratic.com/?p=700#comments I find it fascinating that the CEDAW map almost exactly mirrors the skin colour and wealth distribution on earth? Don’t you find it fascinating that white, wealthy people are also the most moral(best at promoting women’s rights) people according to CEDAW? I have to confess I find it quite the coincidence that the west has managed to develop a system of morality that puts it way out in front of every other culture on the planet. Of course this system of morality is completely objective and just happens, by utter… Read more »
It depends on what part of the developing world one is referring to. For example, West Africa and the some Middle East countries are very different, yet all are considered developing nations. I’ve spent a good deal of time in West Africa, and there isn’t much difference between men and women. Most everyone is poor and powerless (but just like in the US, men fare worse in most social areas, such as health and employment). They need a human crusade, not a women’s crusade. Whereas, in the Middle East, there are huge differences in how women are treated, and they… Read more »