Women
What Does the Future Hold for Them?

Women have often been
victims of discrimination and
violence. But there will soon be
a dramatic change in their lives.

Discrimination Against Females

IN West Africa a businessman buys a nine-year-old child. In Asia a newborn baby is buried alive in the desert sand. In an Oriental country, a toddler starves to death in an orphanage—unwanted and unattended. One common denominator linked these tragedies: All the victims were girls. Their being female meant that they were considered dispensable.

These are not isolated cases. In Africa thousands of girls and young women are sold into slavery, some for as little as $15. And it is reported that each year hundreds of thousands of young girls are sold or forced into prostitution, mostly in Asia. Worse still, population figures for a number of countries indicate that as many as 100 million girls are "missing." This is evidently due to the abortion, infanticide, or sheer neglect of females.

For a long time—centuries—females have been viewed this way in many lands. And in some places they still are. Why? Because in such lands, a greater value is placed on boys. There, it is felt that a boy can continue the family line, inherit property, and take care of parents when they get old, as often these lands do not have any government pension for the aged. An Asian saying alleges that "raising a girl is like watering a plant in your neighbour's garden." When she grows up, she will leave to get married or may even be sold into prostitution and thus be of little or no help in caring for aged parents.

Smaller Share

In countries plagued by poverty, this attitude means less food, less health care, and less schooling for the girls of the family. Researchers in one Asian country found that 14 percent of the girls were malnourished, compared with only 5 percent of the boys. In some countries twice as many boys as girls are brought to health centers, explains a report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). And over 40 percent of the young women in Africa as well as in southern and western Asia are illiterate. "There is a dreadful apartheid of gender going on in the developing world," lamented the late Audrey Hepburn, former UNICEF ambassador.

This "apartheid of gender" does not disappear when the girls reach adulthood. Poverty, violence, and unrelenting toil are all too often a woman's lot, precisely because she is a woman. The president of the World Bank explained: "Women do two-thirds of the world's work. . . . Yet they earn only one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor."

According to a United Nations report, more than 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people of the world who live in dire poverty are women. "And it is getting worse," the report added. "The number of rural women living in absolute poverty rose by nearly 50% over the past two decades. Increasingly, poverty has a woman's face."

Even more traumatic than the grinding poverty is the violence that wrecks the lives of so many women. An estimated one hundred million girls, mainly in Africa, have suffered genital mutilation. Rape is a widespread abuse that remains almost undocumented in some areas, although studies indicate that in some lands 1 woman in 6 is raped during her lifetime. Wars afflict men and women alike, but most of the refugees forced to flee from their homes are women and children.

Mothers and Providers

The burden of caring for the family often rests more heavily on the mother. She likely works longer hours and may well be the only provider. In some rural areas of Africa, nearly half the families are headed by women. In some localities in the Western world, a significant proportion of families are headed by the female.

Furthermore, especially in developing countries, women traditionally handle some of the most laborious jobs, such as fetching water and firewood. Deforestation and overgrazing have made these tasks much more difficult. In some drought-plagued countries, women spend three or more hours every day searching for firewood and four hours a day fetching water. Only when this drudgery is done can they begin to do the work that is expected of them in the home or on the land.

Obviously, both men and women suffer in countries where poverty, hunger, or strife is the daily fare. But women suffer disproportionately. Will this situation ever change? Are there any real prospects that one day women everywhere will be treated with respect and consideration? Is there anything women can do now to improve their lot?