Wo sind die Frauen?

Das NYTimes-Magazin von diesem Wochenende hat einen langen Artikel über den Stand von Frauenrechten in der Welt, und über deren Bedeutung für Entwicklung, Armuts– und Terrorismusbekämpfung. Eine schockierende Analyse über das „Fehlen“ von Frauen weltweit:

Amartya Sen, the ebullient Nobel Prize-winning economist, developed a gauge of gender inequality that is a striking reminder of the stakes involved. “More than 100 million women are missing,” Sen wrote in a classic essay in 1990 in The New York Review of Books, spurring a new field of research. Sen noted that in normal circumstances, women live longer than men, and so there are more females than males in much of the world. Yet in places where girls have a deeply unequal status, they vanish. China has 107 males for every 100 females in its overall population (and an even greater disproportion among newborns), and India has 108. The implication of the sex ratios, Sen later found, is that about 107 million females are missing from the globe today. Follow-up studies have calculated the number slightly differently, deriving alternative figures for “missing women” of between 60 million and 107 million.

Und ein Kommentar der Schwiegermutter über eine junge Frau, die mit Hilfe eines Mikrokredites zur Hauptverdienerin des Haushalts geworden ist:

Sharifa even allows that Saima is now largely exempt from beatings by her husband. “A woman should know her limits, and if not, then it’s her husband’s right to beat her,” Sharifa said. “But if a woman earns more than her husband, it’s difficult for him to discipline her.”

Und noch ein wenig Hintergrund, der den Fokus von Mikrokreditorganisationen auf Frauen erklärt:

WHY DO MICROFINANCE organizations usually focus their assistance on women? And why does everyone benefit when women enter the work force and bring home regular pay checks? One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we’ve come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn’t afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week.

Our interviews and perusal of the data available suggest that the poorest families in the world spend approximately 10 times as much (20 percent of their incomes on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitution, candy, sugary drinks and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children (2 percent). If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries. Girls, since they are the ones kept home from school now, would be the biggest beneficiaries. Moreover, one way to reallocate family expenditures in this way is to put more money in the hands of women. A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.

Was ist falsch mit Männern? Schlechte Gene? Ich glaube, die Frauenbewegung braucht dringend eine ergänzende Männerbewegung, die uns einen konstruktiven Platz in der Welt aufzeigt. Wenn wir nicht in 50 Jahren die selben Probleme mit umgekehrten Vorzeichen haben wollen.

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Datum: Sonntag, 23. August 2009 16:44
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