One Bride, That'll Be 42 Cents Postage, Sir

Although I found the entire Penguin Atlas to be fascinating, what I really found interesting was the page on sex trafficking, particularly the mail order brides. As I was looking at the graphs for the brides, I notices that the Russian bride websites seem to be especially popular, but even more interesting, Russia is also the country with the highest levels of domestic violence deaths. Not only are these women being 'sold' as brides online, they also risk being beaten to death if they stay in Russia. Being interested, I went to goodwife.com, the site listed as having links to all of the 'meet your wife sites. The opening page of the site is filled with pictures of 1950's housewives, several paragraphs about find a good wife, and profile pictures of the women available for 'purchase'. There are links all over for other 'purchasing' sites, as well as versions of dating sites, specifically for international women, and the kicker, they are even sorted by region! So if you are absolutely set on a Russian bride, there are sites just for you! But of course, from what I can see, Latin American women are just as popular, especially among American men.

Clearly, we have a problem here. On one site I found this statement, "American men make the best husbands in the world." What!? Says who? The mail order brides who are essentially being bought? Why then does the US have an almost 50% divorce rate? That means that 1 in every 2 couples will end in divorce. And American men make the best husbands? Not with those numbers. This is a huge problem that not only affects the source countries for women, but the US as well, where these women are coming to live. What is so wring with these American men that they can't find a wife here? That, I would like to know. Although the answer from them would probably be that the problem lies with the American women, we're too independent, not enough housewife blood running through our veins anymore.

Bell Hooks: The First Half of Talking Back

Out of the first half of Bell Hook's book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist|Thinking Black I found the first chapter, titled "talking back," to be the most striking. While I have read parts of Bell Hook's works before, this was the first time that I have not been looking at them from a sociological perspective. Looking back at my annotations I was almost surprised by what I had noted; the different domains in which black males and females dominate (the church and the home, respectively) (pg 5), the fact that girls are silenced and seen as having no future in speaking while boys were encouraged to become preachers (pg 6), or that girls could be threatened with the label of madness for speaking too much (pg 7).

While Bell Hooks sites many differences between the treatment of boys and girls in regard to speech, she also introduces the necessity to "protect the spirit from forces that would break it" (pg 7). The breaking of spirit is something that Bell Hooks talks about later in her book, notably in regards to finding ones voice and in higher education. I found the inclusion of the resilience needed in order to maintain ones creativity made Bell Hooks approach much more holistic. Incorporating the internal emotions associated with interpersonal interactions and the patriarchal hierarchy implemented in the United States makes Bell Hooks work more than simply an analysis of concepts related to Women's Studies.

Along with internal emotions, I was interested in Bell Hooks discussion of "true speaking" as " an act of resistance, a political gesture" (pg 8). Building off of this, Bell Hooks states that anything that challenges domination is a threat, and must be eliminated. In relation to finding ones voice, which Bell Hooks discusses in a later chapter, I though this was very telling as to why more oppressed men and women of all races and colors do not speak out. However, this "voice" must be found in order to move from an oppressed object to a subject who can speak for themselves.

Preventing oppressed individuals from finding this voice are systems of racial, gender based, and class domination. This was the first time that I had ever read or heard of racism, sexism, and classism as all contributing to the oppression of certain individuals, in this case black females. Now that I have had time to process this idea I am surprised that this integral approach is not taken more often. Within the United States institutions do not work independently of one another, so why would systems of domination?

From what I have read so far I think Bell Hooks offers some great concepts and ideas to help frame ones thinking about feminism and what it means to different genders, races, and classes. I feel that the perspective offered is a comprehensive and honest one, and that Bell Hooks does a great job of integrating herself into the text, creating not only an academic work but also a narrative.

Women in the World (Global Feminism)

Women in the World gave me a conflicting notion about gender and who is to "blame" for gender-related injustices.  There are of course some cases where it is obviously one or the other--take for example in Russia where 9000 women were victims of domestic murder.  No real mystery there.  Even in countries such as Egypt where 94% of women find it acceptable for a man to beat his wife for burning food, talking back, or refusing sex--that is the environment in which they are raised.  Were awareness spread, things could change.  Add more shelters, let women know via positive images that they don't deserve this.

Yet this brings me to my point.  Images of what?  America?  Surely this is a country where all women stand up for what they believe in and where every woman is a strong, courageous feminist.  

Wrong.

We are still living in a society where women stand for (even long for) the bad boy.  The chauvinist cowboy who'll slap her ass and call her "sweetie" when she gets mad instead of offering up his responsibility.  We need to be the change we wish to see and yet why then are we still the highest consumers of beauty products, why still are there women who are against the right to control whether or not you give birth, why do we still buy products sold to us with this:

Until we stop supporting this, I can't really claim we're much better than the (other) patriarchal societies of the world.

Professor Miller's favorite columnists

This must be the day for me to share with you all stories about my favorite columnists: first Nicholas Kristoff and now Katha Pollitt. Pollitt writes for a journal called The Nation, and if you find yourself interested in the issues raised in this class, she's a good person to follow from now through, well, the rest of your life! I find that she often writes her columns about exactly the topic I was hoping for, and she has a way of framing things and using evidence and feminist analysis to make incredibly strong arguments.

This week's column is about Roman Polanski. We should talk about this when we do our section on violence against women. She's convinced me. Please take a few minutes to read Pollitt Here.

(PS: That was the first time I added a link on the blog. I am so proud of myself!! Stay tuned for me to tell you all about my favorite news correspondent, Maria Hinojosa, next week.....)

Women of the World

While glancing through the "Penguin Atlas" book I found it interesting that the author used a lot of color and pictures to clearly illustrate some of the inequalities between countries. For a visual learner, this book paints a perfect picture of differences between duties and rights of men and women around the world. While reading through the Unpaid Work section of the book, it was not a shock to me that women and girls work more hours each day doing unpaid work in the household then men and boys. This unequal work is usually done in the home and a personal and political struggle over gender roles. The charts illustrated minutes spent per day washing dishes, hours spent doing housework, and childcare are drastically different for women than men. The average hours spent per week fetching water was performed more by women, and girls under the age of 14yrs old than by men, and boys of the same age. I ask what are the roles of the men? According to the retirement time, men spend more time watching tv! In my own experience, while visiting Haiti during summer vacations I would notice more women and young girls collecting water, and men and boys either playing domino's, playing a sport or partially working. For all the tasks completed in the home by women it is fair to say women should make the decisions in the household. But unfortunately, machismo prohibits such a thing from existing.

The household decision-makers, according to a percentage of women who say their husband alone makes decisions on household spending are mostly done by men in different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa; beginning with 6% in Madagascar to 66% in Malawi. Lower percentages were seen from East Asia/Pacific through the Caribbean and North Africa. I was not shocked by this, I can now trace the origination of gender roles in my culture to the African Diaspora. This books clearly states why feminism is still important today and the drastic changes needed to be made in gender roles

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.

Global Feminism

I was really shocked and surprised when I first read the "Penguin Atlas Women World". In the introduction the author Joni Seager, express that there has been many improvements in the state of women since the publication of this book in 1986.But she also express that the success is very little. And I agry with her because there is more that can be done to improve the lives of women all around the world. Althought there has been improvements in womens lievs the numbers do not reflect that at all. The numbers and statistics are horrible, women are still being opressed and we are in the 21st century. As I was looking at the book I took note that most of these women issues are effected by the culture and customs in these different countrys. You may thin that the U.S has also improved but there are some areas in which it still has alot of work to do when it pertains to womens issues and equality. One of the first things that caught my I and bothered me was in the first section under In their Place. It said "Venezuela: A provision in the penal code provides that an adult man guilty of raping an adult women with whom he is acquainted can avoid punishment if, before sentencing, he marries her." My jaw droped as I read this, I fealt like this was a slap in the face for all women. It dose not make sense and bothers me that the venezualian government would pass a law like that. it must be horrible to live through an experience like that, marrying your rapist!I am curious to know how they deal with the issue of marital rape, or maybe it is not an issue for them? One of the things that did not surpise me was that most households around the world are heade by women. with that being said they are also smaller and more peole are living alone. So for me this means that if women are living alone or they are the head of the household and they get paid less than men,I have to conclude that women are not living very well because they are paid less and are living at the poverty level or even below. another area that really called my attention was Domestic violence. what bothers me here is the fact that they have the statistics of reported cases of domestic violenece but they also state that there can be more and that many women do not report these cases. it bothers me that there are still women "sufering in silence" especially in Bangladesh with 68%.The U.S does not escape the issue with murder, it is the leading country with women known to have been killed by domestic violence with 1,181. this is rally alarming because compared toother countrys there is no honor killings in the U.S and it has the largest amount of women killed by domestic violence. I have to say that in this book the violence and inequality of women really bothered me.