Saturday, January 23, 2010

In Bangladesh, women must be virtuous, not alive

Below, I am copying a part of the article A Hidden Truth Behind Climate Change, by Riane Eisler.

"Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters. One heart-rending study of a Bangladesh flash flood found that 90 percent of casualties were female. Many factors contributed to this high casualty rate which were all avoidable. A woman's role in this Southeast Asian nation, as in most of the Middle East and parts of Africa, is one of dependency - so of course, these Bangladeshi women were not taught to swim. But perhaps the most important factor was that they lived and died in a culture where women are so rigidly controlled that they aren't permitted to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. When the flash flood occurred, they sadly stayed and drowned."

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