Feminism

FEMINISM: THE OTHER F-WORD?
 * fem·i·nism** Pronunciation: \ ˈ fe-mə- ˌ ni-zəm\ Function: //noun//Date: 1895
 * 1** **:** the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
 * 2** **:** organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests

Links of interest: [|Overview of the first, second and third waves of feminism] [|Feminism or Equalism?] [|Feminist.com] [|Media literacy] [|Body image] [|Global Feminism] [|Way Cool site from the UK!] [|Amazing Women Rock] [|GirlUp]

11 Reasons why We Still Need The “F-Word” 1. More girls have been killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in **//all// the battles of the twentieth century.**

** 2. ** Female infanticide persists in many countries, and often it is **mothers who kill their own daughters.**

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3. Approximately **730,000 American teenage girls** will get pregnant this year.

4. When a group of girls were interviewed on 20/20, ABC’s primetime news magazine, and asked if they’d rather be fat or lose an arm, they unanimously answered that **they’d rather lose an arm.**

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5. Far more women and girls are **sold into brothels** each year in the early twenty-first century than **African slaves were sold into slave plantations** each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.

6. Approximately **one third of women worldwide face beatings in the home**. Women aged fifteen through forty four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war //combined//.

** 7. ** Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz, a leading religious authority in Saudi Arabia, declared in 2004: **“//Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe.”//**

8. It is increasingly common for men in South Asia to hurl **sulfuric acid** into the faces of girls or women who have rejected them. The acid melts the skin and sometimes the bones underneath; when it strikes the eyes, the women are blinded.

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** 9. ** In 2008 the United Nations formally declared **rape a “weapon of war**.” In one of its reports it claimed that in parts of Liberia during the civil war, 90% of girls and women //over the age of three// were sexually abused. Major General Patrick Cammaert, a former UN force commander, said: **//“It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.”//**

10. The equivalent of **five jumbo jets’ worth of women die in labor //each day//**//.// The World Health Organization estimates that 536,000 women perished in pregnancy or childbirth in 2005, a toll that has hardly changed in 30 years.

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** 11. ** It would take an estimated $9 billion a year to provide **all effective interventions** **for maternal and newborn health** to 95% of the world’s population. In contrast, the world spends **$40 billion per year on dog food.**

// Information courtesy of: //
 * // Half The Sky. Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn //
 * // I Am An Emotional Creature. The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World by Eve Ensler //
 * // Corporate Women Directors International 2010 Report: Women Board Directors of the 2009 Fortune Global 200. //
 * // Women in National Parliaments: World Classification //