IWD Again...International Women's Day 2010...国际妇女节2010...国際女性の日２０１０年..

Today marks International Women's Day again....Oprah did a special show on Women's rights around the World sometime last yr...here's the link to the full show on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1teYeYl-ggc

I bought the book she recommended written by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl Wu-Dunn.

It's called 'Half the Sky' reporting about the plight of women/girls around the world now in the 21st Century and what we can do to assist them.

They say micro-financing projects target 90% plus women as women borrowers, time after time, multiple studies have shown use their money responsibly in investing in their children's education/food,etc and have an extremely high repayment rate whilst men tend to use the money borrowed irresponsibly and show off to their friends. Men also tend to be worse at repayment of loans. Furthermore, a study i read about last month showed that men have less ability to feel remorse and regret for what they do (confirming my long held belief from life experience that men have less compassion/empathy GENERALLY (not saying every single male species or even a majority but just comparatively as against women). The study in the paper showed that men tend to feel guilt only towards themselves (selfish!) as opposed to women whom tended to feel guilt and care about how their actions hurt other ppl's feelings. Men tend to feel guilty about how their actions hurt themselves, such as feeling guilty about not exercising enough, or feeling guilty about eating too much unhealthy food. Indeed i think this study corresponds to another study done in the UK on prostitution which showed that men who visit prostitutes most often than not know that the prostitutes are either traffick victims or feel disgusted by what they're doing but the remorse/guilt they feel means they still go ahead with the service. The only effective way of stopping them from visiting prostitutes wasn't one based on compassion/empathy but one based on the more selfish reason of being detrimental to themselves, basically, if the police launched a serious crackdown which involved them getting prosecuted, fined, names published on newspaper,etc. Basically, confirming the earlier study on men being generally less empathetic towards other's and more concerned about themselves.

Men are also more likely to be racist, homophobic, sexist, and less tolerant/more extreme, according to one study of Australian men many yrs ago which i read in Melbourne in 2005. This may be true given the general impression we have that most of the extremist/terrorist are men and most violent attacks/crimes based on racism and homophobia are also committed by men. Its not a Coincidence that Our Jails are filled with Men, especially those committing the most vile and violent crimes..

Anyways, here's to celebrating IWD 2010 with all the excitement and motivation one can have, and not forget the achievements and adversities women around the world still face in the 21st Century. :-)