Two different destinies

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33777, 25 February 1975, Page 6

Two different destinies

From the moment their sex is made known to the waiting parents, female babies are assigned a different destiny from their brothers, writes Irma Kurtz in the January issue of “World Health.”

“It is woven into the tone of the midwife’s voice, the colour of nursery blankets, the quality of a father’s pride and a mother’s expectations,” Irma Kurtz says. “The psychology of the inferior is instilled into females in almost every culture.”

Irma Kurtz, an Americanborn journalist, is one of nine women who have contributed to this issue of the World Health Organisation's magazine, specially prepared for the start of International Women’s Year.

I Helvi Sipila, assistant Sec-retary-General of the United Nations and Secretary-Gen-e r a 1 of International Women's Year says in an editorial: “The United [Nations hopes that the | urgent need to improve the (status of women will (become a major issue on the ■'world agenda’.”

The anthropologist, Dr Margaret Mead, writes: “Every time we liberate a woman we liberate a man . . . We need the imagination, dedication and creativity of everyone ... for an inter-dependent, diversified, mutually respecting and supportive planetary society.”

Gisele Halimi, a French lawyer and feminist, decries “all those Judeo-Christian taboos that tend to turn a women into an object.”

“The worst fate for a woman,” she continues, “is to be economically c’opendenr.”

India is one of the few countries with a declining ratio of females to males, reports Dr Promilla Kapur, senior fellow of the Indian Council for Social Science Research. “Neglect of females at all ages, from birth to death ... is a persistent phenomenon of ]nidian society.” Dr N. N. Mashalaba, Medi(cal Officer at Botswana’s | Department of Health, describes the “develoning-world (woman’s life sentence to [childbearing, food production [and heavy manual '"hour.” in Latin America as well, says a Chilean sociologist Teresa Orrego de Figueroa, the countrywoman is “reso- . lute, patient, generous, hardworking and ignorant.” Rights for women have gone mainly to a few city-dwel-lers able to “prove” they are as good as men.

Polish women have overtaken men in education and are to be found in almost every profession, according to Dr Magdalena Sokolowska. Professor of Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In the Middle East, on the other hand, more than half the Arab girls never go to school.

“Both health and women take low priority,” writes Professor Jamal K. Harfouche, Chairman of the Department of Community Health Practice at the American University of Beirut.