Women’s Status and Power: Global Status of Women Today (Burn, Women Across Cultures, 2005)

1
Womens Status and Power Global Status of Women
Today(Burn, Women Across Cultures, 2005)

2
Economic Power

• Power globally linked to economic power
• Employed womens earnings range from 50-95 of
  mens (International Labor Organization, 2003
  UN, 199). The average is about 2/3
• Majority of 1.5 billion people in the world
  living on 1.00/day or less are women. Referred
  to as feminization of poverty.

3
Political Power

• In most countries, voting rights have only been
  awarded to women in the last 30 years
• 15 of the worlds lawmakers are female (2003)
• US ranks 59th among 125 countries with female
  representatives.
• US, France, and Japan all lag behind 13
  sub-Saharan countries
• 15 countries have no female representatives
  Armenia, Bahrain, Micronesia, Palau, Saudi
  Arabia, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Barbados,
  Kiribati, Libya, Nauru, Nigeria, Tonga, United
  Arab Emirates, and Kuwait

4
Males Higher Status

• Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Michelle
  Zimbalist Rosaldo have noted that the prestige
  values always attach to the activities of men
• According to the UN, women worldwide are almost
  always in less prestigious and lower-paid jobs
  than men. In US majority of prestigious and
  professional jobs are held by men
• 71 of computer scientists
• 74 of doctors
• 64 of college professors
• 77 of architects
• 90 of engineers

5
Males Higher Status

• Son preference in most countries, families value
  male children over female children
• The Turkana people of Northern Kenya, great
  feasting held for birth of boy but not for girls
• Female children aged 1 to 4 are most likely to
  die than male children in all countries in south
  central Asia (India, Bangladesh, Nepal) and in
  nearly ¾ of the countries in northern Africa and
  Western Asia
• Discrimination in the care and feeding of female
  infants and higher rates of morbidity and
  malnutrition are reported in many countries
  listed as well as Bolivia, Columbia, Saudi
  Arabia, Philippines, and others

6
Males Higher Status

• Sex-selective abortion
• In Mainland China, Taiwan, S. Korea, and India,
  some parents use amniocentesis and ultrasound to
  determine fetal sex so that female fetuses can be
  aborted
• India now has one of the most distorted sex
  ratios in the world
• 927 females for every 1000 males (globally the
  average is 1060 females for 1000 males)
• In two Indian states, Haryana and Punjab, it is
  793 girls for every 1000 males
• Why?
• Shift from subsistence agriculture to settled
  agriculture which is controlled by men (UN
  Commission on Human Rights) where value is
  attached to property and money.
• Sons are source of family income and provide for
  parents in old age and bring prestigeinterpreters
  of religious teaching, holders of political
  power and high status jobs, soldiers.
• Daughters are expected to marry and have children
  and leave the family. They do not enhance the
  familys economic or social position.

7
Females as Property

• In many cultures, females are property. In
  Pakistan, a father may take his daughter to court
  if she marries without his permission.
• In the United Arab Emirates and Northern Africa,
  women follow parental orders to marry cousins so
  as to keep property in the family
• In Pakistans NW Frontier Province and tribal
  territories, practice of swara persists (amnesty
  International, 2002)handing over girls and women
  to rival partners to settle conflicts by
  establishing a blood tie.
• In Ethiopia, women and girls are viewed as the
  property of male family members who may exchange
  them as they wish.

8
Domestic Violence Worldwide

• Includes
• Prenatal sex selection
• Female infanticide
• Sexual abuse
• Female genital mutilation
• Sexual harassment in schools and the workplace
• Trafficking
• Forced prostitution
• Dowry-related violence (--a dowry consists of
  good or money paid by the prices family to the
  groom or his family)
• Domestic violence
• Battering
• Marital rape

9
Womens Rights as Human Rights

• When women are socially, politically, and
  economically subordinate, this subordination
  fosters a climate that produces
• Intimate partner violence
• War rape
• Forced or voluntary prostitution
• Lack of police protection and a cultural
  acceptance of violence against women

10
Domestic Violence

• The World Health Organization reports that 40-70
  of women murdered in the US, Canada, Australia,
  and Israel were killed by their husbands or male
  partners
• In 9 Caribbean countries, 48 of women say their
  first sexual experience was forced or somewhat
  forced (UN, 2002)
• In the US, battery is the leading cause of injury
  to adult women 700,000 cases are reported each
  year (US Dept. of Justice)
• Leading womens rights organization in Pakistan
  concludes that 80 of women or more experience
  domestic violence

11
Domestic violence, divorce, and economic power

• Question for discussion
• Divorce divide and education level Evidence is
  given that among college-educated couples, the
  divorce filing rate by women approaches 90.
  Couples with high-school level education are
  twice as likely to divorce as those with college
  degrees.
• Why might education and income level be linked to
  marital stability? Or the initiation of divorce
  by women?

12
Domestic Violence

• Carillo study (1992) links domestic violence to
  socially constructed and economically reinforced
  dependence of women on men.
• Unpaid womens labor unvlaued
• Women are trained to believe that their value is
  attached to the men in their lives

13
Divorce

• Challenges to leaving abusive marriages
• Great social stigma attached to divorce
• Womans status is significantly reduced if she is
  divorced
• India women have no right to matrimonial assets
  upon divorce (Jaising, 1995)
• United Arab Emirates and in Iran, a divorced
  mother is only entitled to custody of her
  children until they are 7
• Israeli women are not allowed to divorce their
  husbands if the husband refuses but husbands may
  be granted a divorce if the wife refuses
• In the Sudan, a man may enact a divorce by
  stating You are divorced while a woman must go
  to court
• In Ireland, divorces were not granted until 1997

14
Dowry Death and Honor Killings

• Dowry Deaththe murder of wives by husbands or
  in-laws in India and Pakistan, when the brides
  family is unable to provide the agreed-upon
  dowry, when the husband wants to get rid of her
  so they may get another dowry form a new bride,
  when a woman does not produce a son
• Sometimes called bride burnings because most
  victims are held over the cooking stove until
  their saris catch fire
• 2001 Indian government reported over 7000 of
  these fatalities
• Honor Killing a man is obliged to kill a female
  relative if does something believed to tarnish
  the honor of the familyunmarried women who have
  sex, marital infidelity or suspected infidelity,
  seeking a divorce, flirting, being raped, dating
  without parental approval all quality.
• 1998 case of Saharan Abdullah of Jordan who shot
  his sister in the head four time because his
  brother-in-law raped her. He was released from
  jail after 6 months
• UN estimates about 5000 deaths from honor
  killings annually, Pakistan, about 2 killings
  daily, about 20 prosecuted. The family of the
  victim may compromise with the killer, who is in
  this case a relative
• Brazil fails to prosecute honor killings because
  of alleged infidelity
• Jordan, perpetrators receive sentences of 3
  months to a year

15
Sexual Violence

• Rape of concern to feminists because
• 1. rape is a threat to women everywhere in the
  US, 74 women are raped every hour, 1 in 4 women
  in her lifetime. In India, a woman is raped every
  35 minutes and 1 in 10 reported to police
• 2. Rape laws are weak and poorly enforced most
  of the worlds rape laws conceive of rape as an
  act against the property of another manthe
  father or husband. In most countries, rape
  victims receive little support and feel shamed
  and humiliated. Consequences like in Pakistan,
  being charged with sex outside of marriage or
  honor killings explain why many women do not
  report such crimes. She may also become
  unmarriageable because she is no longer a virgin
• 3. Many victims of rape are girl children or
  adolescents Especially true in parts of Africa
  such as Zimbabwe and South Africa where some
  unscrupulous folk healers prescribe sex with a
  virgin to treat AIDS

16
War Rape

• Rape of women during wartime is often used as a
  tactic to punish the enemyubiquitous in war
• WWIIMoroccan soldiers rape Italian women,
  Japanese soldiers raped Korean women, Nazi
  soldiers raped Jewish women
• 1990s Bosnian Serbs raped between 20,000 and
  50,000 Muslim women in the former Yugoslavia
• In Somalias civil war, all factions raped women
  to punish rival factions
• An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women and girls
  were raped during a civil war in less than 100
  days in Rwanda in 1994
• In 2003, reports from Liberia, Zimbabwe, and
  Burma indicate that government soldiers used rape
  to terrorize and control groups that oppose the
  government

17
Types of War Rape

• Genocidal rape Rwanda, Balkans, intended to
  destroy an ethnic group or political group
  perceived as the enemy, ethnic cleansing
• Opportunistic rape when men take advantage of
  the breakdown of law and order that may occur
  during wartime to commit crimes against women,
  knowing they it is unlikely they will face
  punishment
• Political rape punishes individuals, families,
  or communities that hold different political
  views. When daughters or wives are raped to
  punish their male relatives (variation on women
  as property theme)
• Forced concubinage kidnapping of girls and women
  to wash, cook, serve, and have sex with soldiers
  and militia. Documented in Uganda in 1980s and
  Zimbabwe and Burma in early 2000s

18
Prostitution

• Effect of prostitution overlooked by governments
  in Thailand, Korea, and the Philippines who use
  prostitution to boost their economies and
  militaries
• Sexual tourism Thailand, Brazil, Hungary,
  tourism based on the travel of men from first
  world countries to third world countries to buy
  cheap sex from Exotic women.
• Pimps control about 80-95 of prostitution
• World wide, most prostitutes are women with no
  other economic choices because of multi-layered
  systems of sex discrimination

19
Explanations for Womens Lower Status

• In cultures historically and presently where
  women have little control over reproduction along
  with males greater size and strength, some types
  of work were more appropriate for each gender
• Womens work became concentrated in the private
  sphere, mens in the public sphere because they
  were not constrained by childcare
• Resultant Gender stereotypes beliefs about the
  qualities of each gender
• Gender norms/gender roles social rules regarding
  what is appropriate for each gender to do

20
Explanations for Womens Lower Status

• Gendered division of labor is often a function of
  biology (pregnancy and breastfeeding), but mens
  dominance in the public sphere has often been
  linked to having greater property rights,
  political and economic power and the increased
  value placed on paid labor
• Theories Development of patriarchy linked to
  Neolithic period when agriculture developed and
  the labor of children were needed to increase the
  production and further surpluses (women as
  commodities)resources to be traded, controlled,
  and acquired (Lerner, Creation of Patriarchy,
  1986)
• Control of women means control of paternity (even
  so, about 1 in 25 men are unknowingly raising
  children not their own, or 4)
• Devaluing of womens work linked to development
  societies based on moneywomens labor has
  private use value (for the family) while mens
  has exchange value (yielding money or exchange of
  goods). Power and status linked to ability to
  make money
• Well explore this more with Crittenden

21
Oppression

• Often mens individual acts of dominance over
  women are the reflections of cultures overall
  systems of gender power relations
• Lips notes that the occurrence of many forms of
  routine oppression of women by men is mindless
  and unintentional
• Similarly, women often discourage girl children
  from challenging traditional gender relations
• FGM
• Brokers of sexual slavery
• Women of the upper class often exploit women of
  the lower classes (video later in semester)

22
Third Wave FeminismStatus of Women in the US

• WOM 101

23
Some of Womens Rights Today

• In 1972, 26 of men and women said they would not
  vote for a woman for president. In 1996, that
  sentiment had plummeted to just over 5 for women
  and to 8 for men.
• Ninety-two percent of adults now say (2007) they
  would vote for a woman for president from their
  political party if she were qualified for the
  job. This support has increased steadily over the
  past 50 years.
• On July 5, 1993, marital rape became a crime in
  all 50 states. However, when his wife is most
  vulnerable (e.g., she is mentally or physically
  impaired, unconscious, asleep, etc.) and is
  legally unable to consent, a husband is exempt
  from prosecution in 33 states.
• In the United States, a woman is raped every
  three seconds, a woman is abused every 18
  seconds, and four women are killed by their
  boyfriends or husbands every day.
• In May of 2004, the FDA blocked womens over the
  counter access to the morning after pill, a high
  dose of birth control pills that can prevent
  pregnancy after sex, despite the findings of two
  different scientific boards which supported
  increasing womens access to Plan B. Plan B would
  be particularly useful in cases of sexual
  assault, in rural areas, and for lower income
  women and would substantially reduce the number
  of abortions.

24
The Third Wave

• The Third Wave is in our hands, either to create
  or ignore. Some central issues affecting women
  now
• Loss of reproductive freedom
• Pay inequity
• Domestic inequity
• Pornography
• Violence against women
• War
• Environmental destruction
• Feminization of Poverty

25
Loss of Reproductive Freedom

• Less than one third of all women in the world
  have access to contraceptive information, and
  more than half have no trained help during
  pregnancy and childbirth.
• Forty-three (43) percent of women will have an
  abortion by the time they are 45 years old.
• Legal abortion is one of the safest and most
  common medical procedures available in the world
  today. Legal abortion entails half the risk of
  death involved in a tonsillectomy and
  one-hundredth the risk of death involved in an
  appendectomy. The risk of death from legal
  abortion is even lower than that from a shot of
  penicillin.
• The most effective way to reduce the need for
  abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancies.
  Almost half (49) of all pregnancies in the
  United States are unintended, including more than
  30 percent within marriage. Better access to
  contraception, responsible sex education and
  emergency contraception could cut the number of
  unintended pregnancies and abortion dramatically.
• Abstinence-only sexual education, sexist
  insurance policies, lack of access to health
  care, and restrictions on abortion rights are all
  negatively impacting womens reproductive
  freedom.

26
Pay Inequity

• Among women aged 16 and over, 73 percent work in
  four occupational groups administrative support
  professional specialty service workers and
  executive, administrative, and managerial.
• White women make 78 cents to every white male
  dollar earned. Black women earn 64 cents and
  Hispanic women only 53 cents.
• College-educated women earn only 794 more per
  year than white men who have never taken a
  college course, and 14,217 less than
  college-educated white men.

27
Domestic Inequity

• Women do 70-75 of the housework, and if there
  are children in the household, 70-75 of the
  child raising. Because of this second shift,
  women work, on average, 15 more hours than men
  every week.

28
Violence

• Males are the least likely to report a sexual
  assault, though it is estimated they make up 10
  of all victims. Young females are four times more
  likely than any other group to be a victim of
  sexual assault.
• 73 of sexual assaults were perpetrated by a
  non-stranger 38 of perpetrators were a friend
  or acquaintance of the victim, 28 were an
  intimate and 7 were another relative.National
  Crime Victimization Survey, 2005
• Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in
  America, someone is sexually assaulted.
• One in six American women are victims of sexual
  assault, and one in 33 men.
• In 2004-2005, there were an average annual
  200,780 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual
  assault.
• About 44 of rape victims are under age 18, and
  80 are under age 30.
• Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by
  over 69.
• --from Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network
  Statistics Collection

29
Perpetrators

• Perpetration 
• Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men.
  Among acts of SV committed against women since
  the age of 18, 100 of rapes, 92 of physical
  assaults, and 97 of stalking acts were
  perpetrated by men. SV against men is also mainly
  male violence 70 of rapes, 86 of physical
  assaults, and 65 of stalking acts were
  perpetrated by men (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).

30
IPV

• Nearly 5.3 million incidents of IPV occur each
  year among U.S. women ages 18 and older, and 3.2
  million occur among men. Most assaults are
  relatively minor and consist of pushing,
  grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting (Tjaden
  and Thoennes 2000a).
• In the United States every year, about 1.5
  million women and more than 800,000 men are raped
  or physically assaulted by an intimate partner.
  This translates into about 47 IPV assaults per
  1,000 women and 32 assaults per 1,000 men (Tjaden
  and Thoennes 2000a).
• IPV results in nearly 2 million injuries and
  1,300 deaths nationwide every year (CDC 2003).
• From 1976 to 2002, about 11 of homicide victims
  were killed by an intimate partner (Fox and
  Zawitz 2004).
• In 2002, 76 of IPV homicide victims were female
  24 were male (Fox and Zawitz 2004).
• The number of intimate partner homicides
  decreased 14 overall for men and women in the
  span of about 20 years, with a 67 decrease for
  men (from 1,357 to 388) vs. 25 for women (from
  1,600 to 1,202 Fox and Zawitz 2004).
• Previous literature suggests that women who have
  separated from their abusive partners often
  remain at risk of violence (Campbell et al. 2003
  Fleury, Sullivan and Bybee 2000).
• Firearms were the major weapon type used in
  intimate partner homicides from 1981 to 1998
  (Paulozzi et al. 2001).
• A national study found that 29 of women and 22
  of men had experienced physical, sexual, or
  psychological IPV during their lifetime (Coker et
  al. 2002).
• Between 4 and 8 of pregnant women are abused at
  least once during the pregnancy (Gazmararian et
  al. 2000).

31
IPV Victimization

• The National Crime Victimization Survey found
  that 85 of IPV victims were women (Rennison
  2003).
• Prevalence of IPV varies among race. Among the
  ethnic groups most at risk are American
  Indian/Alaskan Native women and men,
  African-American women, and Hispanic women
  (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000b).
• Young women and those below the poverty line are
  disproportionately victims of IPV (Tjaden and
  Thoennes 2000b).

32
Pornography

• There is a difference between pornography
  (unequal power, violence, dominance, and
  conquest) and erotica (warmth and sensuality).
• Sexual exploitation (pornography) violates human
  dignity and bodily integrity and is a violation
  of human rights.
• If a womans life is constrained by lack of
  education and employment opportunities by racism,
  by economic or political crisis, by childhood
  sexual, physical or emotional violence, or by
  poverty, then sexual exploitation aggravates and
  intensifies the harm.
• Even when women voluntarily enter into these
  situations, in hope of making money or finding a
  better life, the dynamics of the brutal, often
  illegal sex industry, quickly leave the women
  with few other options and a feeling of
  powerlessness in their own lives.
• Multiple studies have found direct evidence of a
  causal relationship between the consumption of
  pornography and increases in social levels of
  violence, hostility, and discrimination.
• Substantial exposure to violent sexually explicit
  material also leads to a greater acceptance of
  the rape myth that women enjoy being coerced
  into sexual activity, that they enjoy being
  physically hurt in sexual context, and that as a
  result, a man who forces himself on a woman
  sexually is in fact merely acceding to the real
  wishes of the woman, regardless of the extent to
  which she seems to be resisting.

33
War

• In the 1980s, Women Against Military Madness
  (WAMM) was formed in Minneapolis to protest the
  nuclear arms race. They received nationwide
  support and continue their nonviolent, grassroots
  activism today.
• The war in Iraq is coalescing a new womens
  movement.

34
Environmental Destruction

• Toxic waste, pesticides, nuclear fallout, and
  other pollutions take their first toll as cancers
  of the female reproductive system, and in
  stillborn infants and birth deformities.
• The George W. Bush presidency has the worst
  environmental record in the history of the United
  States.
• Bush weakened the Clean Air Act, allowing power
  plants to increase the amount of pollution they
  put into the air. What's more, the White House
  has scheduled a meeting for later this month to
  decide how much further they will go to weaken
  clean air laws.
• Bush endangered our water by allowing mining
  companies to pollute streams with impunity.
• Bush cut the EPA budget for 2004 by 500
  million, gutting the agency's ability to enforce
  environmental laws effectively.
• Bush made significant cuts to the Superfund
  program, reducing the burden on polluters to pay
  for their own messes at the taxpayers' expense.
  (New Jersey, the state to which Whitman is
  returning, has the highest number of Superfund
  sites. Welcome home.)
• Bush declared open season on the nation's parks,
  monuments, and forests, opening them to drilling,
  road building, and other potentially damaging
  activities.
• Bush weakened protections for endangered species
  and made it more difficult to put new species on
  the endangered list.

35
Feminization of Poverty

• Almost half of all homeless women are refugees of
  domestic violence.
• One third of the one million women who seek
  emergency shelter each year can find none.
• Two thirds of all illiterates are women.
• Women and children comprise eighty percent of all
  poverty population.

36
Hope, Work, and Change

• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
  committed citizens can change the world. Indeed,
  it's the only thing that ever has."
• --Margaret Mead