Women have it pretty bad in the West – but perhaps not for the reasons you imagine, if, say, you’re a regular reader of the Guardian or Jezebel. Because, although women in Asia and the Middle East have to navigate stonings for adultery, acid thrown in their faces for refusing arranged marriages and being screwed out of their rightful inheritances by sharia law, the western sisterhood struggles under the yoke of an even more pernicious form of oppression, known as female privilege.
Even the most misogynistic right-wing commentator could be forgiven for imagining that women are suffering terribly in Europe and America, what with all the noise they make. But no: a litany of facts and figures show that it’s never been such a good time to be a girl – an unmitigated disaster for the legions of feminist agitators who make their living from confected outrage and contrived grievances.
Statistics reveal that only 29.7 per cent of people murdered in the UK and 22.2 per cent of those murdered in the US are women. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, married women are less likely to be abused by partners and less likely to be stalked than if they were men.
Suicide is a hidden but major concern for our society and is the number one cause of death for men between 20 and 49 years old. The Samaritans suicide helpline charity puts this depressing statistic down to recent changes in gender roles and family structure that has seen some men’s “jobs, relationships and identity, radically altered.”
Fortunately it seems that women are not being affected by societal changes in the same way and are three times less likely to commit suicide than men, the lowest figure since records began in 1981. Back then, men were only twice as likely as women to kill themselves. A terrible burden for the modern feminist to carry, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Women’s health issues continue to receive a high degree of public attention and funding. Breast cancer research has twice as much spent on it each year as prostate cancer despite both having a similar death rate.
Women also retire earlier and live longer than men. Despite this great triumph for women, some in the media still try to spin this story negatively. A recent article in USA Today called Women can’t escape the gender gap even in retirement, laments the fact that women who take a hit on their retirement payments by collecting them early, will be worse off than men doing the same. Because, miserabile dictu, they will have to live for longer.
There has been a concerted movement to improve the status of women in the workplace and it seems that things have paid off. Not only are women getting paid the same as men for doing the same job in most circumstances, they are also much safer when they go to work. Much, much safer: 96 per cent of those who die in the UK workplace are men.
When it comes to breaking the law, it is again preferable to be female. Official guidance given to judges in the UK is that they should consider the “disadvantages” of being a woman when they pass sentence. Despite this seemingly flying in the face of both feminism’s fight for women to be treated equally and basic democracy, the justice system seems to have eagerly applied this advice to their work. Only 17 per cent of first-time female offenders are given custodial sentences. For men it’s 29 per cent.
Women have an 80 per cent chance of being granted bail, whereas men have a 62 per cent chance. In 2007, a report commissioned for the Home Office called for women’s prisons to be scrapped altogether. In the US, the discrepancy between men and women’s sentencing for the same crime is remarkable: one study of men and women convicted of the same crime in criminal court found that men receive sentences that are on average 63 per cent longer.
With harrowing numbers like these, it’s no wonder the modern feminist movement is so perpetually furious with everyone. Wouldn’t you be?
In practical terms, the policy of assuming women have less agency over their own actions has resulted in some odd court rulings, such as the case of a couple in Wales who were convicted of plying their 15-year-old baby sitter with the drug meow meow and sexually abusing him. The wife had sex with the underage boy while the husband watched. The wife was jailed for three years; the husband for four and a half.
If there’s one area in which women are truly excelling in at the moment, it’s education. Girls continue to outperform boys in all subjects apart from maths in school. A study by the British Educational Research Association suggests that this gender gap is down to lower expectations teachers have for boys. Once again, the real victims here are the girls, with those depressingly high grades wide-open future job prospects.
Women are a third more likely to go to university than men. Moreover, Western women have complete freedom to pursue the degree of their choice instead of being forced into taking a subject that could lead to higher-paid jobs, as is the case elsewhere in the world. The countries with the highest percentage of women graduating with science degrees are Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Romania, Algeria, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan and Italy.
Despite avoiding the STEM subjects, things are working out pretty well for young female professionals: British women under 40 are earning more than men for the same work. I could go on, but I imagine by now my female readers are about ready to top themselves. I mean, it’s almost as if there’s a system in place that defaults to catering to those who were born female, granting them enhanced legal, educational and healthcare protections.
What a burden women today carry, truly.
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