Global Gender Gaps Shrink; Women 60% of World Poor

Danielle Plesser

SOC202

November 21, 2008, 10:40 PM (oops)

The website Women’s E-news’s article “Cheers and Jeers of the Week: Global Gender Gaps Shrink; Women 60% of World Poor” covers events that have taken place recently around the world and through the list of positive and negative events summarizes the overall progress women have made in the world towards equality. Statistics released from resources such as the World Economic Forum, and are placed alongside bullet note lists of events around the world (such as Taiwan’s demand that Japan apologize to the comfort-women of World War II).

Now, I’m not sure how I feel about an article that’s part of the “Cheers and Jeers of the Week” section of a site called “Women’s E-news.” I’m sure that plenty of the statistics offered do point to very serious issues as well as to episodes of progress in some nations. However, when it’s made into such a dynamic scale, an either-or, with women clearly being the focus of the whole site, I can’t help but think that there must certainly be some bias in the way that it’s written. I assume more outrage is laced into the “Jeers” and some of the things worth “Cheer”ing about seemed a little strange to me. I do like the article though, and its structure reminded me that I need to get to work on my powerpoints for class. As far as news articles go, if you’re looking for a dumbed-down version of what’s happening to women around the world, this might work. I just worry that a site concentrated on only news about women will only attract a limited and already informed audience.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3823/context/archive