All About History: A gender divided

Monday, October 3, 2011

At October 3, 2011 at 12:46 PM , Dr. Faina Ulindang said...: " But the systemic oppression of women tends to be cast in terms of claims for empathy: we shouldn’t follow these policies because they are not nice, not enlightened. Some development researchers have started to make a compelling case, too, that oppression of women impedes countries’ efforts to escape poverty.

But the data in the Newsweek list show that we need to frame this issue in stronger, more sweeping terms: When poor countries choose to oppress their own women, they are to some extent choosing their own continued poverty. Female oppression is a moral issue; but it also must be seen as a choice that countries make for short-term “cultural” comfort, at the expense of long-term economic and social progress.
"When the poorest countries – most of them in Africa or with Muslim majorities –choose to sustain and even devise new policies that oppress women, we have to be willing to say that, in some measure, they are choosing the economic misfortune that follows. The developed world’s silence suggests that it takes the mistreatment of black and brown women by black and brown men for granted, rather than holding all people to one standard of justice."Naomi Wolf

refer to newsweek,the source of this commentary.