First off, great points. Well thought and presented.
However, you would be surprised at the women's equity movements currently being carried out in a 'grass roots' fashion in the Middle East. Particularly in respects to art and culture.
Also, Western 'Society' spawned the suffrage and gender equality movements more as a general consequence of our attitudes towards individual freedoms and liberties, rather than as some engendered response. Such a movement occurred here because it was both possible and socially relevant.
I wouldn't necessarily say
culturally we are head and shoulders above the rest, as that implies cultures are quantitatively measured somehow. Technologically, legally, all of that good stuff, most definitely. In terms of qualitative culture (art, music, community) we have very much lost our way. Western Culture is actually somewhat of an oxymoron.
Anyway, with that being said, those statistics were not meant to be comparative, but rather generally indicative of the status of the
woman in general, not merely the
North American woman. As I said earlier, I do not believe you can, or should, separate rights based solely on Geography. As I saw it, this thread was about Women's Rights, not North American Women's Rights.
I would disagree. Much of the hyper-sexualized attitudes surrounding females are 'encultured' and taught as part of being male, rather than individual personality disorders. In certain respects, via media, education, peers, and so on, young men become entangled with the notion that conceptualizing females in this kind of degradative fashion is 'okay'. I feel that, as a culture-wide aspect, and not merely compounded individual behavior, is a far greater root cause.
A great case-in-point would be the extremely high non-response percentage in man-to-woman domestic abuse cases in the Southern United States (this was a famous case study). These actions were not the result of male-to-male sexual misconduct, but as consequences of a culture of misogyny, hegemonic masculinity, and abuse. When such behavior becomes prevalent, individual psychoses cannot be turned to as a viable explanation - the answer must be cultural, and not individual.
While that experience was relegated to a few States, the non-response statistics from former victims speak to the ubiquitousness of that particular phenomenon across the country. Obviously, the situation is much worse from a global perspective, which I feel we must take into account. Remember: women are women across the globe, not merely in North America.
No disagreement there!
I thought our culture was head-and-shoulders above the rest?
(just kidding).
I agree that such movies are a response to very unfortunate demand, as well as capitalizing on a very lucrative opportunity. While the individual actors themselves should very well take responsibility for putting out such garbage, female corporate control of media at the highest levels is still negligible. If you want to take umbrage with the general direction of contemporary media decisions, women are not the appropriate avenue of complaint!
Well, it has much more to do (I am assuming you mean in a global perspective, as I did) with women being relegated to secondary economies in developing nations; assuming illegitimate (prostitution, human trade, drug trafficking) economic roles as a response to widespread patriarchy, tradition, and misogynistic attitudes towards women's role in the workplace.
It is also due in large part to the lack of education, and women's traditional role in tribal-styled communities in the developing world. As global capital continues to expand, the traditional role of women in these countries (vanguards of the environment and home, community care, child-rearing) become low-value assets in a capitalistic economies. With little training and education - or opportunities to obtain it due to the reasons mentioned above - women are relegated to poverty.
I feel this is indicative of the general position of women from a global perspective - one of devalued contributions, and the assumptions that only masculine (i.e., profitable) contributions are high-value. A similar attitude, to a lesser degree, is still prevalent in the West. If it was not, the women who still perform almost double the housework of their mates, even in comparable payed work situations, would be payed for their domestic labor!
