BEST COUNTRIES TO BE A WOMAN
Measures of well-being include life expectancy, education, purchasing power and standard of living. Not surprisingly, the top 10 countries are among the world’s wealthiest.
- Iceland
- Norway
- Australia
- Canada
- Ireland
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Japan
- Netherlands
- France
SOURCE: UNDP Gender-related development index
It’s clear that Canada’s much better for women than the United States because . . . uh . . . well, culturally they’re so different. And it’s nice to know that Japan’s become so much more egalitarian with regard to gender. And that the Netherlands have really gotten a handle on that honor-killing stuff.
Most of all, though, I’m relieved to see the US didn’t make the list, because that would have made Melissa McEwen’s head explode.
I’m suprised to see Japan up there; the economic opportunities for women are nowhere near as good as in the States.
Maybe they weighted life expectancy heavily? (I know Icelandic and Japanese women are extremely long-lived).
And this good news, via AoSHQ:
Kos Kid: Women Have It Great Under Islam!
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/257398.php
Netherlands. Featuring the sound of women thundering.
Were did the US come in? Right behind Saudi Arabia?
The UN, hmm? And four of the top six countries are heavy on blondes and redheads? I’m just saying…
You know what really frosts my… generic female identifying parts? My MOTHER subscribes me to a couple of “women’s” magazines that apparently purport to speak for my gender (all right, one is More, which revelation indicates that I’m over 40), and to a mag, they appear to take for granted that I’m a Democrat and that my greatest 2008 challenge will be whether to vote for some form of audacity or for the Experienced Woman. Here I sit, a new-millenium American woman. I have three young children, and being their mom was, by family choice and some hardship, my primary job until they were ready for some amount of outside schooling; then I went back to work. My husband now so entirely meets our family’s financial needs that I can pursue a career that pays little but affects many in profound ways; if he had had different ambitions, I would have been not just willing but able to pull off the same trick. I have access to a marketplace of goods, services, and ideas undreamed-of in earlier eras. I have the potentiality to go anywhere, achieve whatever I’m capable of, without regard to arbitrary limitations imposed by my gender or expectations surrounding it. My country, where everyone is equal under the law and everyone has the right to attempt to achieve whatever they can, has afforded me all of these opportunities. Yet it doesn’t appear in this list. Damn them.
Oh, wait: so many of them already are.
Well, there’s the problem. The US doesn’t need to work on “gender-related development”.
I think the main beneficial category the UN uses for all of its decisions is “is this the US or not?”
I have surfed far and wide looking for serious discussion of the UNDF report. Congradulations. This is the only one I have found.
I refuse to take anything put out by UN at face value.
As I see the measure of the human condition is the quality of the available choices. The report solely concerns itself with relative equity of outcome and not quality of choices.
The welfare of women can not be divorced from the welfare of men. For no man can expect to achieve any happiness when surrounded by cranky women. Men and women are not two seperate species.
In the matter of choice versus outcome, Jamie seems quite pleased with the choices she had, as well as the outcome of those choices. Yet I suspect the UNDF would give Jamie a lower score because her freely made choices did not produce a statistically equal outcome.
I find it amusing that not only didn’t Mrs. Clinton, with an even shot at the presidency, seem to have any relevance for this poll, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4572387.stm couldn’t drag Germany into the top 10 either.
Oh well, I guess one mans bigotry is another persons tool for twisting success into a different category favorable towards improvement over achievement.
I have a hunch much of the reason for the US being off the list is because we are waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That can’t be good for anybody.
Hard to know about Germany. Probably too much sausage cooking going on there.
[…] which on Protein Wisdom, Jamie posts the following comment Here I sit, a new-millenium American woman. I have three young […]
Oops, than link was supposed to read “Angela Merkel”.
Please excuse the rather thick bone in my head.
Crap! The link didn’t even work! One more time…Angela Merkel
I also find irony in the question; if the US is nominally a bigoted and racist country, why is the democrat party fighting over whether to have a woman or person of color as their nominee, isn’t it true they think either could win?
It actually doesn’t matter much if the report bares any similarity to reality or not. The gender warriors would invent it if it didn’t exist, as they have so many times in the past:
http://endabuse.org/programs/display.php3?DocID=262
I have access to a marketplace of goods, services, and ideas undreamed-of in earlier eras. I have the potentiality to go anywhere, achieve whatever I’m capable of, without regard to arbitrary limitations imposed by my gender or expectations surrounding it. My country, where everyone is equal under the law and everyone has the right to attempt to achieve whatever they can, has afforded me all of these opportunities.
Yeah, well, that is what they want you to think, now, idnit?
Japan at #8. Hmmmm. Remind me where the term “bukakae” originated? Not that it was ever intended to be demeaning or anything…
ha, keninnorcal, Jules Crittenden mentioned that women get their own cars on trains in Japan so men can’t molest them. so there’s that. and the less said about tentacles the better.
good points about Japan. But really the women run that country.. but the men don’t know that yet… a mother in Japan conditions her children to a degree you’ll never see here and the ‘salaryman’ he’s off doing his 12 hour day or used to until stagflation hit….(except now the US worker has passed him in hours of work per year..highest in the world…for less money..but stagflation’s coming here too). I have a few years experience in that “pink school” dept.
I think it’s statistics that kept USA out of the top 10. Specifically violence against women. We’re pretty high in that regards. Rape rates specifically.
I think it’s statistics that kept USA out of the top 10.
Can’t slip anything past you, huh?
In other related news, the US continues to pay a disproportionate part for the UN to conduct studies claiming that the US doesn’t make the top 10 list of countries in which it is best to be a woman. The real reason we are not on that list is that we are the answer to the question, “who’s your daddy?”
Afghanistan and Iraq both make the list of 10 worst places to be a woman.
Although, some days it certainly seems like it.
Cite, please?
I have surfed far and wide looking for serious discussion of the UNDF report.
But:
I refuse to take anything put out by UN at face value.
is really all that needs to be said.
So who needs a “serious discussion”?
This is the UN of “oil for food” fame, correct? I’ll be sure to give this report all the attention it deserves.
“I think it’s statistics that kept USA out of the top 10. Specifically violence against women.”
So, as with the infant mortality issue, it all comes down to how other countries choose to report and/or acknowledge (or, more to the point, underreport and/or ignore) their troubles. The UN has such a demonstrated affinity for cooked books I’m surprised alphabet soup hasn’t been renamed United Nations Recordkeeping Stew.
Jamie, I have the same problem with “women’s magazines.” So now I subscribe to Lucky and Domino (no politics, only consumerism!), W (little politics via empty-headed celebs, otherwise mindless consumerism!), and Consumer Reports (more politics than you’d think, but I may need a new washer some day). I don’t appreciate being told I’m a fretful NewageyEco-freak who’s obsessed with dieting and the war in equal importance.
Amazing that so many US women are getting angry about this. You might want to ask yourself why? Becasue you want to think that the USA is the best country in the World? Where else have you lived? What other languages besides English can use and explicate yourself like these diatribes? And you might want to educate yourself and take out an Atlas..because there is NO COUNTRY called America (those are continents named with America–failed geo. with that sort of reasoning). It might be that I feel superior attitude that spews forth from the USA that might just be your reason for feeling anger over not being in the Top 10.
This is a very good article, thank you! It’s the first time I visit your website, just found it via Bing. I’ve been going around and there’s a lot of top quality work. But one thing… I tried to put it to my Google Reader and can’t. Perhaps it’s a problem of mine only… I’ll contact you if it stays like this!