Women Across the Globe

After reading through the statistics about women all over the globe there were things that I was surprised about and some that didn't come as that much of a shock to me. As I suspect was intended, the fact that the United States is one of the only countries in the world who does not have an equal rights amendment ratified was shocking. It seems surprising not only that we would still not have that, but I found it almost more shocking that certain countries indeed had signed and ratified the bill, yet such terrible living conditions still existed for many of the women who resided in those region. Along with that some of the facts such as the countries with the highest education completed for women were surprising. The fact that a country such as Saudi Arabia, which has such a structured patriarchal country would have such a high rate of women who participate in higher education was surprising when in general they have such limited rights. One of the last things that stuck out to as being surprising was the graph showing poverty rate of women and the fact that some countries in Latin America, Mexico specifically, had very low rates of women living in poverty, even less than here in the United States. Considering the poor rights that women are privy to in Mexico and the roles in which they usually occupy as the inferior, weaker sex than the "Machismo" men I found it surprising that women are so well off.

Unfortunately there were things in this book that, while unsettling, didn't come as much of a surprise. The fact that there are many countries in the Middle East and Africa where woman are responsible for the most unpaid labor is not a surprise, or that women are still not able to own property in male dominated societies and where tribal government is still prominent.

Overall I found that this book was very insightful when regarding the state of women's rights and issues worldwide and not just what we knew (or thought we knew) about conditions here in the United States.