It’s definitely interesting to connect human rights violations in China (which obviously include women, especially when dealing with issues like forced abortions) to women’s rights throughout the world. I was particularly shocked to realize just how poorly both types of rights seem to be enforced. For example, on the human rights graph in the first article, China rates below a 3 (on a scale to 7) in every category of their human rights report card, and around the world women work 2/3 of the hours worked, but earn only 10% of the income, and own less than 1% of the property. That’s deplorable. The “invisible red line” that exists in China can almost be extended to the rest of the world when applying to women: even in countries where men have more rights than do men in China, women have to be wary of saying or doing the wrong thing and being killed, harmed, or exiled because of it. There are more similarities: the China article talks about how young, educated Chinese are among the most patriotic, government-supporting people around, partly due to the fact that their schools indoctrinate them. The other article talks about how women are continually oppressed by men and tradition, which, although it isn’t necessarily a school, can be its own indoctrination. For an example, just look at the women from small, conservative tribes in Afghanistan who are voted into the women’s seats of legislature by the menfolk in their tribe, and how they are as old-fashioned about women’s rights as the men in their tribe.
I thought that this article (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1952552,00.html) linked well to the idea of enacting international treaties and laws to reduce mistreatment of women throughout the world. Granted, it’s a French law designed to help members of both sexes from being “psychologically abused,” but it’s clear that it is mainly aimed at preventing women from being verbally or physically abused, as it is mentioned that 10% of French women suffer some sort of domestic abuse, without even mentioning a figure for men. It seemed interesting to me that a) the French are trying to take into account women’s mental wellbeing as much as their physical (and economic, and societal) wellbeing, and that b) the French government is willing to admit that in France—France! A developed, well-respected, Western country—a tenth of all women are abused. Can you imagine how many women are being abused in countries like China, where the government would almost certainly not release such a condemning statistic?
The second article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/17/honour-killing-tulay-goren) is about an honor killing that took place in London in 1999. The father who killed his daughter has just now been sentenced. On one hand, it’s encouraging to see this man sentenced to life with minimum of 22 years in prison and to see the girl’s mother testifying against her father; on the other, it took ten years to get to this point. This hasn’t got much to do with the China article, but it reminds me of the Islam article from a few days ago and also relates to the article just about women’s rights.
The third site (http://china.hrw.org/) is not a news article, but rather a website devoted specifically to articles about how China’s current policies do not align well with the ideas of human rights. I thought it was especially interesting that there is a website like this when the China article discussed both how the internet has forced/is forcing China to loosen up in some ways and how China cracked down on controversial internet usage prior to and during the Beijing Olympic games in 2008.
The role different countries’ economies play in liberating or oppressing women is also very interesting, but this is getting quite lengthy.
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