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Preface
There are approximately 3.2 billion women in the world,
and given the diversity of their life experiences it is difficult to make
generalizations about womankind as a whole—except to say that everywhere
they are treated, to a greater or lesser extent, as the subordinates of
men. While women comprise half of the world’s population and are
responsible for two-thirds of the world’s work, they earn only about
one-tenth of the world’s income and own approximately one-hundredth of the
world’s property, according to the United Nations. Over the last century,
however, women’s rights activists have made tremendous strides, and an
increasing number of women and men around the world are beginning to
recognize that, as 2003 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi so
eloquently put it, to "disregard women and bar them from active
participation in political, social, economic, and cultural life would in
fact be tantamount to depriving the entire population of every society of
half its capability."
The modern women’s rights movement was born of the
Western Enlightenment but did not effect significant social change until
the 20th century. Women in Europe and the United States successfully
lobbied for many of the same rights as men, and their victories breathed
life into the struggle for equality around the world. The movement,
however, has always been met with resistance. Given the long history of
Western intervention in the developing world—self-serving imperialists
have often claimed to be acting in the best interest of local
inhabitants—it should come as little surprise that efforts to change the
traditional role of women are often met with hostility, even among some
women. In recent years, women in the developing world have become
increasingly outspoken in their demand for equal rights. "The idea of
cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights,"
Ebadi argued in a 2005 interview. "Human rights is a universal standard.
It is a component of every religion and every civilization."
Even in Western nations, some of the hard-fought gains
of the past century—particularly a woman’s right to control her sexuality
and reproductive freedom—face increasing peril. Opponents of the feminist
movement argue that activists have gone too far, claiming that programs
such as affirmative action in the workplace have tipped the scales in
favor of women. Yet a recent survey of starting salaries among college
graduates in the United States indicates that women earn far less on
average than comparably educated men.
This book addresses some of the contemporary issues that
are of pivotal importance to the struggle for women’s rights. The first
chapter assesses the advances that women have made in the public sphere
and the inequities they still face. Women may have earned the right to
vote in most countries, but nowhere are they equally represented in
governing bodies. Likewise, they may have earned the right to work outside
of the home, but everywhere they remain the poorest of the poor. As the
second chapter explains, this inequality in political and economic power
translates into unequal access to health care. Women suffer from poorer
health and higher mortality rates than men not only because they receive
less attention from the medical profession, but also because they remain
the victims of misogynistic cultural traditions. The third chapter
examines another kind of pandemic affecting women’s health throughout the
world: violence against women. Women suffer gender-specific violence
during times of war, within the domestic sphere, and as a part of
traditional community practices. As economic disparity in the world
increases, more women are subjected to the systematic torture and sexual
violence of the global sex trade, which is discussed in detail in the
fourth chapter.
The last two chapters in this book examine the greatest
threat to the continued advancement of women’s rights—religious
fundamentalism. The fifth chapter discusses the status of Muslim women in
the context of the conflict between the Western and Islamic worlds,
addressing complex and politically contentious questions. Why is it that
women’s rights lag so far behind in the Islamic world? How do Muslim women
envision their own liberation? Lest we fall prey to the ethnocentric
assumption that religious fundamentalism poses a threat to only Muslim
women, the sixth and final chapter examines how Christian fundamentalists
are trying to roll back reproductive rights in the United States and,
through international aid, in the developing world.
I would like to extend my thanks to all the authors and
publications that granted their permission to use their work for this
compendium. I would especially like to thank Lynn M. Messina, Sandra
Watson, Paul McCaffrey, Rich Stein, and Clifford Thompson at H.W. Wilson
for their role in the book’s production. In addition, I would like to
thank John Packer, Terence Fitzgerald, Angela Dykshorn, Sally Puleo, Dr.
Gwynne L. Jenkins, Dr. Jane Gibson, and Nuchine Nobari for their helpful
advice during the research for this project.
Jennifer Curry
August 2005
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