Traditions
The second social force is tradition. Traditions can be and have been very harsh toward women. Some cultural traditions are so harsh that females are biologically trumped by males. Examples of this include men withholding nutrition, abandoning wife and daughters, abuse, neglect, violence, refugee status, diseases, and complications of childbirth. Tradition of this abuse often means correction goes unsupported by the government.
If you study traditions of oppression toward women, such as looking at the Population Reference Bureau or The United Nations, you will find a worldwide concerted effort to persuade government, religious, and cultural leaders to shift their focus and efforts to nurture and protect females in their countries. Progress has already been made to some degree, but much change is still warranted because life, health, and well-being are at stake for billions of women worldwide.
The chart below shows outcomes of oppression toward women that have existed and currently exist somewhere in the world.
| Table 3: Outcomes of the 9 Worst Forms of Oppression of Women-Worst to Least |
| 9 - Death from cultural and social oppression (Various countries) |
| 8 - Sexual and other forms of slavery (Western Africa and Thailand) |
| 7 - Maternal deaths (Sub-Saharan Africa and developing nations) |
| 6 - Rape and sexual abuse (South Africa and United States are worst countries) |
| 5 - Wage disparity (worldwide) |
| 4 - No/low education for females (various degrees in most countries of the world) |
| 3 - Denial of access to jobs and careers (many developing nations) |
| 2 - Mandatory covering of females' bodies head to toe (Traditional countries, Muslim) |
| 1 - Public demeaning of women (still practiced, public and private) |
One of the most repugnant traditions in our world is the sale of children and women into sexual slavery and other forms of slavery. Countless civilizations that are still influential in our modern thought and tradition have sold girls and women the same way one might sell a horse or cow. It is estimated by a variety of organizations and sources that about 1 million women are currently forced into the sex slavery industry (boys are also sold and bought into slavery).
India, Western Africa, and Thailand are some of the most notorious regions for this atrocity. Governments fail at two levels in the sexual slavery trade:
- First, they allow it to occur.
- Second, they fail to police sexual slavery which is often criminal and/or organized crime in nature
The consequences to these girls and women are harsh at every level of human existence and are often connected to the spread of HIV and other communicable diseases.
Sickness and disease are areas where tradition does not favor women. Although pregnancy is not a disease, it carries with it many health risks when governments fail to provide resources to expecting mothers before, during, and after delivery of their baby. Maternal deaths number in the hundreds of thousands and are estimated by the United Nations to be around 1/2 million per year worldwide. Typically, very little medical attention is required to prevent infection and mediate complications. To address access to prenatal care one must approach it at the larger social level with government, health care systems, economy, family, and other institutional efforts.
The Population Reference Bureau puts a woman's risk of dying from maternal causes at 1 in 92 worldwide. It is as low as 1 in 6,000 in developed countries, such as the U.S. and as high as 1 in 22 for the least developed regions of the world.
Maternal death is the death of a pregnant woman resulting from pregnancy, delivery, or recovery complications.
