involving women holding assets. Time and time again, it has been shown that when men control the purse strings, they tend to NOT spend as much on the family's well-being as the woman/mother would. The stats in this article simply bear that out once more.
It's not about having more disposable income. It's about feeding your children instead of buy a few packages of cigarettes. It's about sending them to school instead of drinking down at the bar on the weekend. Many men repeatedly demonstrate that they would rather spend selfishly than on their families.
I don't disagree that there are a lot of happy families and females here in the Gulf. Clearly there are, and it's kind of hard to equate the situation and conditions here to those in Cote D'Ivoire or some other poor nation. But I think in general we can talk about empowering women here in the Gulf and providing them the same opportunities as men have. In the many years I have lived in Qatar, I have known of honor killings, women who were denied the chance to study or work, girls who were routinely sexually abused by family members....so as in any country, there is room for improvement.
Your comment about Bill Gates, while probably accurate, misses the mark I think. While there may not be a preponderance of women in the IT field, the larger issue Gates was commenting on to that audience in KSA is Saudi's failure to fully utilize their female citizens as a valuable and important resource. I don't know of any studies off the top of my head, but I would venture that stats there would show much the same as ones here in Qatar do: females outperform males in school and they have higher rates of matriculation. Bearing that in mind, it seems rather idiotic to NOT be making the most of the fact that one's country is rich with such capable, ambitious people.
"Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise."
-- Maya Angelou
involving women holding assets. Time and time again, it has been shown that when men control the purse strings, they tend to NOT spend as much on the family's well-being as the woman/mother would. The stats in this article simply bear that out once more.
It's not about having more disposable income. It's about feeding your children instead of buy a few packages of cigarettes. It's about sending them to school instead of drinking down at the bar on the weekend. Many men repeatedly demonstrate that they would rather spend selfishly than on their families.
I don't disagree that there are a lot of happy families and females here in the Gulf. Clearly there are, and it's kind of hard to equate the situation and conditions here to those in Cote D'Ivoire or some other poor nation. But I think in general we can talk about empowering women here in the Gulf and providing them the same opportunities as men have. In the many years I have lived in Qatar, I have known of honor killings, women who were denied the chance to study or work, girls who were routinely sexually abused by family members....so as in any country, there is room for improvement.
Your comment about Bill Gates, while probably accurate, misses the mark I think. While there may not be a preponderance of women in the IT field, the larger issue Gates was commenting on to that audience in KSA is Saudi's failure to fully utilize their female citizens as a valuable and important resource. I don't know of any studies off the top of my head, but I would venture that stats there would show much the same as ones here in Qatar do: females outperform males in school and they have higher rates of matriculation. Bearing that in mind, it seems rather idiotic to NOT be making the most of the fact that one's country is rich with such capable, ambitious people.
"Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise."
-- Maya Angelou