Facts and Events: Women's Roles and Gender

In a very interesting book that I am reading presently, I came across some facts and events that were listed right in the first page, and I thought you might be interested in them. Consider the following facts and events that happened between 1986 and 1996 carefully:

- A judge in Rome, Italy, ruled against the victim in a rape case on the grounds that it is impossible to rape a woman wearing jeans, because they cannot be removed without her cooperation. In protest, women worldwide staged a “skirt strike,” wearing jeans to work.

- One in four U.S college students believed that the activities of married women should be limited to home and family.

- The Reverend Jerry Falwell claimed that a popular children’s toy, the “Tinky Winky Teletubby,” is an attempt to make children into homosexuals because it is purple and carries a “purse.”

- Women have been heads of state in twenty-three countries around world, yet in others they lack basic human rights such as voting and going to school.

- Women remained far more likely than men to suffer from serious depression and eating disorders.

- Less than 5 percent of the artists in New York’s Metropolitan Museum collections were women, but 85 percent of the nude paintings were of females.

- On television news, 97 percent of the anchors over the age of forty were men.

Crawford, Mary and Rhoda Unger. Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology. 3rd ed. Fairfield: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

The authors then said that “gender, sexuality, and power are at the core of social controversies around the world,” and I strongly agree with that. But do tell me, what do you think?