Myths about Women, their representation and their Leadership in the USA
August 24, 2011 in Women's Rights
Our male political leaders in Washington in our male dominated Congress continue to vote against a woman’s basic rights–even to her own body, and a woman’s right to privacy, or her right be represented in a U.S. Court of law even after being subjected to gang rape [See the case of Jamie Leigh Jones and the related Al Franken Amendment.] Then we have Dumb and Dumber here in the USA making statements such as one I just read in Huff Post to the effect that we have Hillary as our Secretary of State while in Muslim countries women would be put to death for daring to be so “uppity”–Aren’t we lucky?
My response to that reader and to anyone who believes that the USA is tolerant to woman:
If by “Arab country” you mean Muslim country, they have a much better legacy of female leadership at the highest level in their land than the USA. For example, Benazir Bhutto was the former prime minister of Pakistan. The USA has yet to have a women as President of our nation.
Other historical Muslim female leaders include Razia Sultana, who ruled the Sultanate of Delhi from 1236 to 1239, and Shajarat ad-Durr, who ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1257. Speaking of Egypt Nearly one-third of the Parliament of Egypt also consists of women. The U.S. population is 51 percent female. In Congress, however, 90 percent of the lawmakers are male, 89 percent in the House of Representatives and 93 percent in the Senate.
In the past several decades, many countries in which Muslims are a majority, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey, and Kyrgyzstan have been led by women. We need to stop buying into stupid cliches and start seeking the truth for ourselves.
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In 2009, nearly 5 million more women than men lived in poverty. *
Families headed by a single adult are more likely to be headed by women, and these female-headed families are at greater risk of poverty and deep poverty. 32.5% of families with a female householder where no husband is present were poor and 14.8% were living in deep poverty. [SOURCE]
* and in case you wonder why:
For full-time, year-round workers, women are paid on average only 78 percent of what men are paid; for women of color, the gap is significantly wider. These wage gaps stubbornly remain despite the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, and a variety of legislation prohibiting employment discrimination [SOURCE]
