"At the top of the list - the "Best Places to be a Woman" - we see the usual suspects: Iceland and the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Canada. On that planet, we see rankings in the upper 90s for the survey's five categories: Justice, health, education, economics, and politics.
Women are out-earning men in college degrees (United States), domestic abusers are being banned from their homes and tracked with electronic monitors (Turkey), and female prime ministers are being elected (Denmark and Australia).
Now look at the other planet, "The Worst Places in the World to be a Woman". In Chad, the worst of the worst, women have "almost no legal rights", and girls as young as ten are legally married off, which is also true in Niger, the seventh worst place for a woman. Most women in Mali - the fifth worst - have been traumatised by female genital mutilation. In Democratic Republic of Congo, 1,100 women are raped every day. In Yemen, you are free to beat your wife whenever you like."
"When poor countries choose to oppress their own women, they are to some extent choosing their own continued poverty. Female oppression is a moral issue; but it also must be seen as a choice that countries make for short-term "cultural" comfort, at the expense of long-term economic and social progress."
"It is not politically correct to attribute any share of very poor countries' suffering to their own decisions. But it is condescending to refuse to hold many of them partly responsible for their own plight. Obviously, the legacy of colonialism - widespread hunger, illiteracy, lack of property or legal recourse, and vulnerability to state violence - is a major factor in their current poverty. But how can we blame that legacy while turning a blind eye to a kind of colonialism against women in these same countries' private homes and public institutions?"
"If you are not innumerate, you can start a business. If you are not living in mortal fear of rape and beatings at home, you can organise your community to dig a new well. If you are not subjecting your daughter to traumatic genital injury at three and marrying her off at ten, she can go to school. And, when she does marry and has children of her own, they will benefit from two educated, employed parents, which means twice as much literate conversation in the home, twice the contacts, and twice the encouragement to succeed.
Educated, pushy mothers make all the difference.
As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in the Newsweek issue, "The world needs to think more strategically and creatively about tapping into women's potential for growth. Studies show that helping women access trade and grow businesses helps create jobs and boost incomes."
But on Planet Worst, forcing terrified, uneducated women to remain at home is more socially acceptable than facing the fact that this means choosing to drag down incomes for everyone. It is time to stop tiptoeing around the poorest countries' responsibility to do something essential about their own plight: Emancipate their women."
This article just spells it out in brilliant fashion. The education of women is underrated in what the article calls "Planet Worst" countries. When we allow women to expand out of the private sphere and into the public, we add 51% of the population to the labour force thus improving the economy. If we look at it from a strictly economic standpoint, this makes absolute sense. These countries are sacrificing economy for the cultural past. Does it say in your rulebook that you cannot make new traditions? That you cannot change or adapt? Do not adapt for the West's sake. Adapt for your own. Emancipate your women. Their education will better your country.
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