Back to the Future, Part 9: The 10 Most Dangerous Countries for Women

Back to the Future, Part 9: The 10 Most Dangerous Countries for Women 

It's been a while since I've had the heart to post another in this series of "back to the future" pieces. I guess I am just so tired of winning . . . 

But, hey, looks like the MAGA crowd will have to work a bit harder because we're not yet Number 1!

The Thompson Reuters Foundation, "the philanthropic arm of Thomas Reuters, the world's biggest news and information provider," has just published its most recent poll of "The World's Most Dangerous Countries for Women." (The first Reuters poll of the most dangerous countries for women was published in 2011.)

Great news! The United States made the list!!!! But, darn, just barely--we're number ten on the list, last place: "The United States ranked as the 10th most dangerous country for women, the only Western nation to appear in the top 10."

Here is the list, beginning with the worst and ending with the least (?) worst: 1. India; 2. Afghanistan; 3. Syria; 4. Somalia; 5. Saudi Arabia; 6. Pakistan; 7. Democratic Republic of Congo; 8. Yemen; 9. Nigeria; 10. United States.

Criteria for ranking: healthcare; discrimination; cultural traditions; sexual violence; non-sexual violence; trafficking.

Good to know: we tied for third place Syria on the "key area" of sexual violence, but we were only in sixth place when it came to non-sexual violence. 

So we'll just have to keep trying harder to make America great again for women! Because we need to be Number 1!

And the way things are going these days, if the poll is taken seven years from now, we should be in the Republic of Gilead territory, no problem.

By the way, the reactions to the publication of the story are almost as disheartening as the poll itself. The comments at ProPublica are profanity-laden, utterly sickening comparisons of Trump and Bill Clinton--at the time I last looked, there was no reckoning at all with the Reuters poll or story. Meanwhile, over at Jezebel, most of the comments are more-or-less, "Well, we can't accept this poll because clearly Country X is worse for women than the U.S." What an argument.

In her report on the Reuters poll for Fortune, Natasha Bach notes, "The U.S.’s poor standing in this survey arrives just a week after a UN report found the U.S. to be the most unequal country in the developed world, with 40 million people living in poverty." (To read the U.N. document, "Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights on His Mission to the United States of America," click here.)

Welcome to America, 28 June, 2018.

(For the previous eight posts on "back to the future," click on the label, below.)

Update, 29 January 2022: The Thomson Reuters poll from 2018 is no longer accessible online (or at least the link I had provided to it is no longer working). Reports about the poll from many sources are still widely available, however, so I have now linked to the Thomson Reuters fact sheet about the poll. Here also is a United Nations report, from the same time-frame--a press release with a summary of findings (here) and the report itself, "Gender-Related Killing of Women and Girls" (here).