International Woman's Day

March 8th was International Woman's Day, and I was too busy to blog.

Worldwide, women do about 2/3 of the work, get 10% of the wages, and own 1% of the land.

Of course the places which treat women worst are precisely the ones that wouldn't dream of celebrating women´s day. Places where women get jailed, or even stoned, for having been raped. Places where their life is legally worth exactly half a man's life, or where they're never legally adults, and a widow has to get her son's written permission to travel.

Things have come a long way since I was told that getting a university degree in mechanical engineering was an excellent idea, because then I could get a really good job as secretary to an engineer. But even in Europe, women still get paid less than a man doing the same job, and still have to postpone or dump their careers to look after children or parents. Perhaps that's partly why so few politicians are women. Just look at any photo of the EU national leaders - one woman and twenty-six men.