More than 100 million women are missing...

…but it’s not news.

The statistics in this first article alone are mind boggling.

Five thousand honor killings a year? One percent of the world’s landowner’s are women?

Forgive me, but when people sit up on pedestals and preach to me about different cultures doing things differently, I usually think they’re full of it. It’s one thing to not eat pork. It’s quite another to beat your wife to “discipline” her. Throwing acid on girls going to school is another good one. You know, because we wouldn’t want their education to give them ideas about contributing to society. They need to stay home behind an abaya or burqa and not be exposed to the world. Other men might get the wrong idea.

Did they ever think that if a man gets the wrong sexual idea about seeing a woman’s face or arm or ::gasp:: leg in public, that there’s something wrong with the man? That maybe he only sees women as sexual beings and that’s all they’ll ever be to him? Oh wait…that was the idea all along…

Once again, the New York Times comes through with three amazing articles about women around the world.

I consider myself fairly well-informed on international women’s issues and I was staggered by this article (it’s long, but worth it):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em#

Again, I’m not a big fan of Hillary, but she does stand up for the double-X chromosomes out there. What kills me the most about this interview, and is mentioned in the article I listed previously, is the fact that maternal health is ignored in so many of these places. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23clinton-t.html?pagewanted=1&hpw#

You would think that if you didn’t value women except for producing more sons to continue your horrible culture, you would make sure that having those sons didn’t kill them. Evidently that’s a silly thought, I mean, there are plenty of other wombs available right? Whether they’re willing or not doesn’t seem to matter either.

Also, way to avoid the explosive topic of Saudi Arabia, Hillary…they’re our “friends” who killed how many women and girls last year?

I am physically affected by this next story. That sounds overly dramatic, but it’s true. I don’t know anyone who can read about a government agency orchestrating an acid attack on school girls and not shiver a little. $1200 cash payment for each attacked girl. I suppose that’s fine. They’re girls. Not worth much anyway I suppose…who knows if they would even bring that much money in for their bride prices. I guess, economically speaking, these monsters were paid handsomely to ruin young girls’ lives. And it’s not an isolated incident either. Apparently, resorting to violent, cruel means to keep girls from getting an education is popular in the region.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23school-t.html#

Even sadder than the attack is a father’s unwillingness to help his daughter at no cost to himself and his selfishness to want to gain personally from his daughter’s suffering. I might have cried a little. Don’t judge me.

Now it’s time for an article that’s not like the others! Development is a powerful and, at times, dangerous force. Logically, having more money and education should increase your status in a society, but apparently this is a false notion. Life is hard for all of these women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23FOB-idealab-t.html#

Do you ever wonder what kind of person commits infanticide? Or what kind of person lets their daughter die of neglect? Are they even people? It also begs the question: how can women do this to their daughters? If you spent your life suffering at the hands of men, and you have a daughter, how do you just ignore her and LET HER DIE?

I suppose the appropriate way to end this is to make some cute little comment about how this all going to show how afraid men are of empowering women, but I feel like that doesn’t even begin to describe what is happening in the world. The systematic hate of an entire gender is happening in front of us. I don’t really know what else I can say about it.