Global Feminism

Out of all the texts that we've had to read so far I found The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World by Joni Seager one of the most interesting and helpful books in understanding women's issues around the world. Unlike other books we've read thus far, The Penguin Atlas gives more stats and figures about various aspects of women's lives on an international level. Also, with being a visual learner, this book helped me to see and understand more about the issues we are learning about. Plus the broader prospective on all women (not just American women) was interesting to see.

After the introduction Seager starts the book off with a color coded map of the world according to which countries have signed and ratified, just signed, or haven't signed the CEDAW (UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). According to the map all countries around the world (with the exception of Iran, Sudan, and Somalia) have signed the CEDAW, pretty much all of them have ratified it as well except for one, the U.S has (as of yet) to ratify it. I'm not going to lie, I was shocked by that. During high school history class I had heard about the progress of the Women's Movement in the U.S, and thought that comparatively women in this country were further down the path to equality than those in other countries. Or, that is at least what I thought was the case in high school. The books colorfully illustrated pages disbanded my formerly conceived notions about women in the modern world, and it allowed me to see the realities of their situation.

One last thing that stuck out to me in the book was that it mentioned the circumstances of other minorities, not just women. For example there was a section on global homosexuality that also shook my rudimentary knowledge to the core. For a long time now I had been dreaming of potentially moving to Europe, with my ideal destination being France. All because I had the notion that Europe was a more accepting place in terms of homosexuality then anywhere in North America. Then, to see the statistics, and to see that Canada was more far more accepting and progressive in terms of homosexuality than some of the European Union was (including France) left me dumb founded. Just goes to show what studying this book has done for me, and probably for many others as well.