The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World

The first section of this book is titled "States Against Discrimination". Does it make sense for the United States to be the only country which has signed but not ratified the CEDAW Treaty (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women)? Countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and South Africa have not only signed this Convention but they have also ratified it. I find it very hard to believe that countries in which women are not allowed to drive cars or ride bicycles, where women may not confer citizenship, where women need permission from their husbands to leave the country and even where women are offered by their families to the men who rape them in order to preserve family honor, have signed off on this "Treaty of Equality". I can't help but find humor in the fact that the very first page of this book is a lie and that the United States appears to give women less rights than women in other parts of the world who are being secluded, raped and even killed by their husbands.