Pages

Fictionista, Foodie, Feline-lover

Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts

Monday, August 27, 2012

A little knowledge can be a knee-jerk thing

there's a poster going around Facebook that celebrates American women in a way that's meant to contrast American attitudes toward women with Taliban attitudes toward the fairer sex.
It's pretty in your face, but doesn't it feel good to see those attractive American women in flight suits laughing it up on the flight line. (Never mind that they're all white and all but one of them is blonde, the picture looks like a screen shot of some new television series.)
And the message is--America, where women can be anything they want!
But not so fast... There's a really interesting website called Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership that has some sobering  statistics that suggest (and I know this will be a shock to you) that perhaps the United States is not quite as progressive as some people would like you to believe.
On NationMaster.com, there's a list of countries by percentage of women in government. Belgium is number one, with a whopping 55 percent. Care to guess where the US fits in?  We're at number 92 with a shameful 7.1 of women in government. (And remember, women outnumber men in the US by almost 5 million.)  The list only encompasses 112 countries (Good news, the US is ahead of Tajikistan, Benin, Syria, Chad, and Iceland (a surprise). But the countries with a better track record for women in government include Iran (27.1 percent), Saudi Arabia (33 percent), Libya (11.8 percent) nd Rwanda (10 percent).  Something to think about before dancing around singing "Neener, neener, neener."