What’s So Scary About Smart Girls?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Any article that compares Iran and Saudi Arabia like this is a naive over-generalization. I'm not sure what the author means by empowerment, but Iran is much closer to US in terms of gender equality than Saudi Arabia.
In Iran, 12-year education is mandatory for both genders. There are more female university graduates than male (around 60%), although much like US, fewer pursue engineering degrees[1]. More than half of medical students are female.
Yes, girls are discriminated against in labor market. There are less likely to get a job if there is a similarly-qualified or slightly less-qualified male candidate and will probably earn less than their male counterparts, but don't you have the same problem in your country?
I hope you understand why I hate it when someone puts the name of my country in the same sentence as Saudi Arabia, where they sentenced a woman to flogging because she dared to drive[2].
[1] I don't have any statistics, but in my university, 25-30% engineering students were female. There were less girls in traditionally male-dominated majors like civil engineering, compared to computer and electrical engineering. Also, the majority of Chemistry students were female.
[2] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/flogging-sentence...
Perhaps you are under the impression that I claimed Iran was an egalitarian utopia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahra_Rahnavard
I would see US goverment propaganda more in the way they craft the narative about its percieved allies and enemies. And as parent-poster complained, this is most visible in comparing the naratives about "our arabic friends" Saudi Arabia and "on the axis of evil" Iran, where according to wikipedia "are no organizations such as political parties or labour unions to provide public forums" in SA, while in Iran there is Islamic Consultative Assembly and you can protest about unfair presidential elections :-)
Way I see this, US-Iranian relationships should be more or less similiar to US-Russian relationship ...
And of course, let's ignore the fact that there is one reason for this, and the fact that people of the same ideology in the US also by and large support slavery, racist law, religious warfare and so on. We are simply to accept is as socially normal and even desirable that there is a sizeable (several millions at least) voting block in the USA that wants to bring back slavery, destroy the principle of equality under the law (men-women, dhimmi, slaves, ...).
Here's the argument that is defeating equality under the law and bringing back slavery around the world : Tolerance ! (Since shariah law has been implemented in 4 extra countries in the last 5 years, and has made inroads in western nations including the UK and the US, I think it's a very defensible position that it's gaining ground). This would be funny, but it's very real. It's so completely pathetic.
So are you pro-slavery ? Or are you a racist ? This religion needs to be eradicated, to be returned to just being one more book that illustrates just how much of an abomination historical cultures were. It's that simple.
And we generally need to lose the noble savage attitude. The vast majority of human cultures are out-of-date, repressive, slavery-based, anti-equality, ... , and generally horrible abominations to live in. Islam is one of these, but this should be the default position of anyone on any culture, because, well, the vast majority of cultures are horrible for the people living in them, and are moral abominations. And NOT just because of economic conditions. We need to stop the "ooh shiny robes on the priests, and nice buildings in Dubai" attitude towards other religions and look at how they treat people.
You mean religion of "tolerance", or "multiculturalism" ?
> It's that simple.
Nothing is ever "that simple" :)
You might want to read up on modern scientific theories on the subject. There is no need to outlaw that, as it cannot survive, except for very brief periods. Human minds are copy machines. This will cause different religions/ideologies, where they converge to clash and only a single one can survive (because they don't mix, at all, google "Island species" for why this doesn't happen), except through artificial barriers. Racism is but one such barrier. Geography is another.
As anyone who's travelled around a bit and talked a bit with youths in 2 remote parts of the world knows perfectly well, all cultures are converging into a single one. It may not be entirely clear which one is to win, but the variety of half a century ago is dead and done for.
What's depressing is that none of the realistic candidates are the least bit tolerant. Even the "liberal" candidate ideology has much, much less tolerance for alternative opinions (never mind actual differences) than the environment I grew up in. The other alternatives are much, much worse, and will directly attack you if you're so much as suspected of having different opinions, as any blogger e.g. in the middle east can testify (my favorite "the big pharaoh").
So no, I mean another religion that needs to be destroyed. If you think that the constant terror acts will actually turn people away from this religion, you urgently need to open up the history books.
If you think the future of the religion looks anything different from constant war, genocide, terror and misery for the people following the religion, you need to answer one very, very hard question : given that it has constantly caused these things for 1300+ years now, why would it be different this time round ? Please note that the environment where this faith was created was very, very advanced and tolerant, like our society. Example : Egypt, Africa (which was a province of the Roman Empire back then, not the entire continent). It was eaten alive and turned into the repressive hell-hole in ~150 years, and remained a repressive hell-hole right up to today. The only liberating influence was colonialism, and we all know how exactly the liberation happened : lots of guns.
Preventing this from happening again is something that justifies almost any amount of violence.
So 1400+ years is a very brief period? :)
Start of the Greek city states. Greece counts between several dozen to hundreds of religions. 500 year later, 3 big religions left. Roman republic + empire, starts out with hundreds of religions. When it ended ... 2. 200 years after it ended, only one religion really survived it. Or you could take Africans in America. At one point African genes were pretty much the only genes of 18% of the population of the United States. Currently, about 2% of Americans have majority African genes, a number that's dropping exponentially (but obviously only once per generation).
But as I said Google "island species" and read around a bit. It is part of the original theory of evolution, described by Charles Darwin, and pretty much the only part that has survived almost unchanged.
Essentially, diversity can exist where large natural barriers separate different groups, so that when individuals copy eachother, they copy, imperfectly, one of their own group. Because small errors make the groups drift apart, diversity occurs. The result is that an ethnic barrier gets created along the natural barrier. When the barrier goes away, because of technology, climate change, military conquest, or a natural disaster, so does the ethnic and/or ideological difference. It does not go away by merging both races or ideologies, it goes away because one of them dies out, to be replaced by the other.
Needless to say, modern technology has been tearing down most of those barriers. If the result is diversity, that will be the first time in history, but it is plainly obvious that there is nothing all that different between the current time period and previous time periods where for some reason populations mixed. The result will be the same : only one culture survives.
You're doing better than the USA by, what, an order of magnitude in this regard.
"""As of 2006, women accounted for over half of university students in Iran[1] and 70% of Iran's science and engineering students.[2]"""
[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5359672.stm
[2]: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7115/full/444022a...
In fact, apparently in Iran almost 70% of science graduates are female [1], making the courses less diverse in terms of gender than the US, which I believe is closer to 50/50 for "science" collectively (can't find data).
[0] http://chronicle.com/article/In-Terms-of-Gender/135304/
[1] http://contexts.org/articles/spring-2011/what-gender-is-scie...
Though I don't know if Iran should be considered a developing country.
I don't know if it's the same in other places.
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are, IMO.
For God's sake. Did you read the article you linked to? Even that article fails to mention many details.
She was sentenced to death for premeditated murder. She argued that she had the right to kill the man because he tried to rape her.
There were evidence supporting her side (the man stopped to buy condoms on the way to the apartment, etc); there were evidence against her (she sent a text message to a friend saying "I'm gonna kill him tonight", the knife was purchased not long ago suggesting it was bought for exactly this reason, etc).
The trial and the appeals process took 7 years. It's unfortunate that little of the media coverage is available in English, all of which are from the same point of view. I have read the interviews with both parties' families and followed the news as new revelations were made. I cannot say for sure what is right and what is wrong, but I can say this with certainty: It was a very complicated case. Reducing it to one sentence is ridiculous, but if you have to, the sentence should be "Iran has the death penalty for female premeditated murderers if the crime is proven in criminal court and held up in the appeals court".
And in Iran women get executed for things outside their control[1]. How does your point relate to anything? Both Saudi and Iranian cultures have problems. What you mentioned is completely irrelevant. FYI, Saudi Arabia has colleges for women, where 100% of the student body is female (engineering majors too).
[1] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/iranian-rape-victim-fa...
[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/boko-haram-...
I stumbled in the last paragraph:
It’s estimated that 100,000 girls under 18 years old in the United States are trafficked into commercial sex each year.
What does that mean? With on the order of 5 million births per year (both boys and girls), that would imply 4% of all women are affected. That seems a bit on the high end. Does anybody know what's going on here in terms of statistics?
Appreciably lower numbers are kidnapped, or introduced into the trade by someone they already know.
> Education does so much more for spreading democracy than
> drones do, but our monetary priorities don't reflect
> this, unfortunately.
As I see it - not beyond a point which is fairly low. You need to pay enough that people who are given to be teachers can live a comfortable life doing what they love.
The hard bit is the culture - having people around who are motivated to be a teacher for its own sake. And not because it's simply a stable job, or for the prestige associated with it.
We try to use money to blast momentum into broken culture - Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, poor neighbourhoods in our own countries. Sometimes
To return to my earlier point - it's dumb to reduce the education debate to just a question of money. Even if you paid teachers quadruple, the bureaucracy would put off a lot of talent.
Some places (the UK) it includes:
* women who voluntarily travel from one country to England for sex work and who have assistance to do so
* women working as sex workers who are assisted to travel within the uk
* all the other more troubling definitions that include coercion and violence
Has anyone made serious attempts to study this sort of thing? I know there have been some A/B tests on charity pitches that other people've cited. For this... ideally you'd like to compare the long-run success of a charity, but that'd probably be too hard. Studying specific fundraising drives with specific end dates seems more doable and might turn up something useful.
It probably would contaminate the results if you had the same charity putting out an honest and a dishonest message that would both reach the same audience, 'cause I think a failure mode of dishonest messages is someone loudly disproving it and denouncing the organization, which would probably hurt both messages. So you might want a lot of charities... or a nationwide charity doing local campaigns in several different states, and assign them randomly to the honest or dishonest message. And then there's plausibility, and other kinds of effectiveness... you may have to try a lot of messages, or make an honest/dishonest pair with a very small change (e.g. just the number). Probably difficult... but I'd be interested to see someone do it.
Also, it would make it hard to choose between competing charities for finite amounds of funding. Would you fund the most serious issue, or the biggest liar?
I'm with you on that.
As for the rest: Do you mean, if you as a donator have seen through the lie, which should you donate to? Oh, I see, you're saying that liars might successfully get people to donate to them when otherwise they would have given the money to a more important cause. Yes, that's a problem. It's just that, well, people tend to think their cause is the most important in the world, and that siphoning money away from other causes for dishonest reasons is not a problem. [Well, for many causes you probably couldn't fool yourself into thinking that, but it seems distressingly common.] Charities who do this may be considered "selfish". It seems the irony doesn't always bother them.
If we could tell those people "You idiots, you are hurting your cause by lying and I can prove it", then that would give them a selfish reason to stop, which seems it might work. Get them to stop, or if they don't, get the reasonable-minded others in their organization to kick them out or leave. It would be nice if they stopped for the right reasons, but if they did it for this reason, that'd still be an improvement.
I don't think "plump up the statistics" is fair if they're using the same definition as other national governmens.
The mistake in your logic is that you're assuming all the children trafficked were born in the USA. Most likely, they would be trafficked by people smugglers and sold as prostitutes, and would come from poor countries.
From my understanding (and I don't claim much knowledge at all) the home-grown, self employed, 'Pretty Woman' type of prostitute is very much a minority.
That's because our priority is not spreading democracy; that's merely the pretext. The priority is lining the pockets of the members of the military-industrial complex.
That aside, let's see. "Why are fanatics so terrified of girls’ education? Because there’s no force more powerful to transform a society." Indeed. "What saddens me is that we in the West aren’t acting as rationally. To fight militancy, we invest overwhelmingly in the military toolbox but not so much in the education toolbox that has a far better record at defeating militancy." I wonder if this has anything to do with what a powerful tool control of the educational system is. For example, look at what the North Korean government is able to achieve through that means. Are the Western governments exhibiting some kind of restraint here? Is it just that they haven't really bothered? Is giving "aid" more difficult politically than beefing up the military? Or is it that serious funding of education would lead to fights about who gets to control it? I am ignorant of such matters, so I'll shut up now.
Boko Haram, the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, and Iran differ in almost every way one can compare: wealth, nationality, race, language, political views, and more. But they do share one thing besides the oppression of women. Have you guessed it yet?
There are no Taoists throwing acid in the faces of women. There are no Buddhists massacring students. There are no Hindu dictatorships refusing to let women drive, or decreeing their testimony to be worth half that of a man's even in the case of rape. No Zoroastrian state punishes thieves with amputation. Some of these religions have had their share of atrocities in the past, but they are rather tame now. Many of them have adherents who are ignorant, poor, and oppressed (especially the Tibetan Buddhists), but the doctrines and traditions surrounding them seem less prone to cause violence and unnecessary suffering than a book endorsed by every group mentioned in the article.
I truly wish it were otherwise.
Everything is more complex than it appears initially.
One last thing.
There are no Buddhists massacring students.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/un-dozens-of-rohingya-muslims-ma...
Still, it does seem that different religions inspire different practices when it comes to violence and human rights. Parts of Islam (specifically Wahhabism and Salafism) are particularly bad these days. The US certainly hasn't helped the situation, but getting attacked by Predator drones is no reason to stone adulterers to death.
Lastly, I feel bad after commenting on this article. I don't think this article has much to contribute to HN, nor do I think HN will contribute much to the dialogue. Sexism + politics is a mix that few can discuss with civility. Now I've injected religion into the mix. I apologize.
Kamikaze has nothing to do with buddhism whatsoever. If you want to stick it to a religion, it would have to be shintoism, an animistic, purely Japanese religion.
Since when is talking about religion racist? It is the epitome of hypocrisy to accuse someone of racism while assuming that everyone who looks the same must believe the same thing. Moreover, I'm indistinguishable from most members of two of the groups mentioned.
> Try this: enter the religion of your choice into a search field, followed by the victim of your choice, with "attack" in between.
I have no doubt that in a world of 7+ billion people, people of every creed (or lack of) do horrible things to each other.
I think you and others have misconstrued my view. The argument I'm making is this: Religions significantly affect how their adherents behave. They change the treatment of women and children. They change propensities to violence. And judging from the examples mentioned in the article, they seem to be a significant factor in the difference in women's education.
I'm certainly not saying any religion is evil or that certain religions should be banned. I think it's fine if people believe whatever they want. (And wear whatever they want, including veils or burkas.)
I want to address your assertion that I and others have misconstrued your view, because we have not. You draw a clear link between Islam and gender-based violence, even to the point of finding exceptions (contra-factual as they are). This approach to thinking about the world is essentially prejudiced, indicative either of both belligerent ignorance and the entitlement to pass judgement without examining facts. Furthermore, rather than exploring the reality of gender-based violence, you contemptuously use its existence as a bludgeon against specific parties.
Your new thesis, that "religions significantly affect how their adherents behave", is undergraduate at best. The topic at hand is gender-based violence, which happens all over the world in many varied cultures and religions. Rather than using this article as an opportunity to take a cheap shot at Islam, you could examine the commonalities between the groups mentioned and other instances of gender-based violence. Consider that one-third of female US service personnel are raped by their colleagues. Does that have anything to do with Islam? Or religion?
I think you should also reflect on the male privilege that is required to regard the subject of gender-based violence as an opportunity to make sweeping judgements about people and religions.
[1] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/central-african-republic-ethn...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/19/...
[4] http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/meiktila...
Consider that the US felt fine about interfering with Iran when they felt they had a too socialist leadership, but has not interfered much with e.g. Norway. Is it perhaps that the religion, skin-color and culture in these countries are different enough that westerner citizens don't complain when their government meddle with these places? Are we confusing correlation with causation?
I must say, I too find it easy to draw conclusions, but considering the big perspective I'm not convinced this book you're hinting to is the root of the issue.
And what solution are you getting at? Should we ban this book? Kill everyone who endorse it maybe?
Yep, they use islam as an excuse to justify their actions, but I am guessing what you want to say is:
Islam is bad. It's the only religion/tradition that actually encourages this sort of behavior.
I like that you admit that other religions/cultures also have bad histories, but then you pull this:
>but the doctrines and traditions surrounding them seem less prone to cause violence and unnecessary suffering than a book endorsed by every group mentioned in the article.
Now I am confused why you are actually believing a group of cruel, illiterate, barbaric militants on what a religion is about and choose to ignore what most other Muslims will tell you.
>no Taoists throwing acid in the faces of women
Do you really think that is a religious practice? Or that a religion would say "If you get angry at your wife, you get should throw acid in her face" ? This is just a social problem like any other (like drug addicts, street crime) that has nothing to do with the religion of the abusers. (I assume you are pointing to "Saving Face" that won the Oscar. Well i don't remember any of the abusers citing religion as a defense in that Documentary).
As for Bomb blasts, Islamic law actually states very clearly that even in the state of war, soldiers may not harm civilians or burn down crops etc. In fact if an enemy soldier surrenders, the law requires that he must be ESCORTED to safety.
As for women oppressing, and being against women education (and driving), that's a load of Bullshit too. Islamic has tons of provisions for women. For example, as far as i understand, western law states that when two people get married, their wealth is legally combined into one, right? And that when they divorce, they split up this total. Now in islamic law, not only does the husband not even get to TOUCH any of the woman's assets (yes she has right of personal wealth) but he may not take back any gift he gave her during their marriage. The law forbids it. Oh and the law obligates the husband to give the woman a wedding gift of her choice (she gets to set the worth as well) before consummating said marriage). And that's just one example. But i do admit that legally, a woman counts as half a witness (but do note, accusing of rape is different than giving testimony of seeing a rape). Oh and if you lie about a woman sleeping with someone, the legal penalty is 90 lashes. And that incident where a woman got flogged because her husband thought she was cheating on him, was actually illegal and legally he has to provide 4 male witnesses (with perfect track records) to get her convicted. And if not proven, the accusers get flogged.
So it's not that Islam is against women or anything, it's just there are a lot of people that use it as a bullshit excuse. For example, in somalia the local militant regime decreed that Islam prohibits wearing of women undergarments as it "conceals her true form". Yeah, they were deriving this from the commandment "thou shall not lie".
So i hope you'd refrain from pointing fingers again. (I know, a fool's hope)
Burmese Buddhists: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25866350
Christians killed their pwn god - that seems pretty violent to me. Most violent terrorist attacks in the US are by pseudo-Christian groups.
Hardly. Jews that did not believe that Jesus was the Christ condemned him; Romans that did not believe that he was the Christ executed him.
In fact, the quoted comment is so far off the mark that it almost seems like deliberate misunderstanding rather than mere ignorance.
Hindus denying rights to women and allowing atrocities like rape and honor killings? Basically the BJP platform in India. Oh, and mass killings of Moslems in the 80s thrown in for good measure.
There is no Zoroastrian or Taoist state, but I'm sure if there was, there would be atrocities there.
Oh, and before anyone says that this is just an anti-religious rant: Pol Pot killed millions, and he was a nominal atheist.
People can and will kill and subjugate people for pretty much any reason. Usually they call it "The Greater Good"
It is about program in Jordan to educate mothers in the poorest regions in basic electrical engineering to allow them to assembly and repair basic solar powered utensils. (Mostly panel->power adapter->battery->light)
The most interesting question for me in the film was "Why don't you educate men as well?" with answer along the lines "Any man from here with any marketable skill would run abroad, from his family, mothers will want to do something to feed their children".
Then there was the scene, where husband of one of the women in the program tried to force her back home and abandon the "solar" school.
I wonder if we could change that attitude about educating women in men like these ...
http://www.rd.com/true-stories/inspiring/barefoot-college-bu...
A choice quote:
"First we declared that men were untrainable. Men are restless, men are compulsively mobile, men are ambitious, and they all want a certificate to show for their efforts. And the moment you give one of them a certificate, he leaves the village looking for a job in the city."
....
"Because the moment you give a woman a certificate, like a man, she’ll see it as a passport for leaving rural areas and going to urban areas to find a job."
So basically like a person? And men and women are the same in this regard? But said that way you have no opportunity to bash men.
Any organization that tries to destroy the concept of a family unit in the name of education is not a good organization in my book. They seem to be one of the worst of the bunch. Especially since the actual "education" they give is all but worthless - they teach basically nothing, and make the poor women think they have been educated.
And frankly the specific organizations for sending girls to school make me feel uneasy. I hope similar organizations exist for boys? I am sure there are lots of bright boys in the world who also can't afford an education. Why make it gender specific? Why not just sponsor kids education, irrespective of gender?
I could imagine in some countries it is more difficult to send girls to school than boys. But a "send kids to school" organization could simply spend more effort there to send the girls to school. No need to make a "girls education" organization.
Girls aren't getting special treatment, they are being singled out for specific support to overcome patriarchy(ies) that would keep them undereducated, isolated, and disenfranchised from power. That isn't an issue that a "send kids to school" organization would be addressing.
Limited resources, maximise the effect. Also, the girls go on to be the caregivers traditionally, meaning the education has a knock-on effect. Thinking long term.
Not if they are educated, presumably. Or if so, then maybe the education was wasted after all? The logic of the article is to educate girls so that they have fewer children.
And why shouldn't educated boys take care to educate their offspring?
- "We must help these women more, because they must overcome the expectations of <gender stereotype>."
- "We must help these women more, because it would be more useful since they are <gender stereotype>."
Gender stereotypes: both oppressive and useful, depending on what you want to sell.
So your suggestion is that they could do the same as they're doing now, but pretend otherwise?
Suppose there was an organization that only sent boys to school. Now if for one boy it is very cheap to go to school, and for one boy it is expensive (maybe he lives further away or he is poorer or whatever), should the organization only send the boy to school for whom it is cheap? I think the organization should try to help both boys.
Likewise an organization that helps kids should help both boys and girls, no matter if helping one gender is more difficult than helping the other gender.
Suppose you are in hospital with cancer. Should they deny you treatment because other men only need a cheap circumcision? What does the illness of any other man or woman have to do with your specific problem?
So they would be acting with the same logic as the "girls education" organizations. Those are the results if you go by efficiency, rather than equality.
Maybe some other solutions could be found, for example "we pay for your boy's education, but only if you also let us educate your girls".
In any case, I think if an organization also helps boys, it shouldn't claim to be a "help the girls" organization.
I'm sure they do. Nobody is trying to demonize families and claim they hate their girls. In fact, Camfed itself says that the reason boys are chosen is simply because they're more likely to find a job after graduation.
Maybe some other solutions could be found, for example "we pay for your boy's education, but only if you also let us educate your girls".
Yes, if the organization had unlimited resources, I'm sure they would be glad to pay for every child's education. That's not the reality, though, so they have to prioritize by focusing on those who wouldn't get an education otherwise. And for the most part, that's girls.
In any case, I think if an organization also helps boys, it shouldn't claim to be a "help the girls" organization.
Seems like a pedantic objection to me.
Well it's a different kind of signal to send out, "girls matter" vs "kids matter". The article here goes even farther by saying the number of boys in existence should be reduced by educating girls.
I'm just saying how I feel about it. I wouldn't donate to a "help the girls" cause, but to a "help the kids" cause. But presumably the charities themselves know how to rake in the most bucks. So perhaps girls work better.
Boko Haram doesn't only target education for girls. Though that is how the media seem to want to present it.
I agree that the much lesser coverage of the deaths of the boys is not really OK though.
The kidnappings haven't been presented as an isolated event, either; it's been emphasized that Boko Haram, a known and active terrorist group with a "track record", is behind it, and that we must stop groups like this from doing the awful things that it is doing.
behind every great/successful man there stands a woman :)