Custom Against Women

I f we uncritically immerse ourselves in the cultural context of any society, seeing it only as it sees itself, then we are embracing its self-serving illusions. Perceiving a society “purely on its own terms” usually means seeing it through the eyes of dominant groups that exercise a preponderant influence in shaping its beliefs and practices. 

Furthermore, the dominant culture frequently rests on standards that are not shared by everyone within the society itself. So we come upon a key question: whose culture is it anyway? Too often what passes for the established culture of a society is the exclusive preserve of the privileged, a weapon used against more vulnerable elements. 

This is seen no more clearly than in the wrongdoing perpetrated against women. A United Nations report found that prejudice and violence against women “remain firmly rooted in cultures around the world.” 

In many countries, including the United States, women endure discrimination in wages, occupational training, and job promotion. According to a New York Times report (6/18/04), in sub-Saharan Africa women cannot inherit or own land—even though they cultivate it and grow 80 percent of the continent’s food. 

It is no secret that women are still denied control over their own reproductive activity. Throughout the world about 80 million pregnancies a year are thought to be unwanted or ill-timed. Some 20 million unsafe illegal abortions are performed annually, resulting in the deaths of some 78,000 women yearly, with millions more sustaining serious injury. 

In China and other Asian countries where daughters are seen as a liability, millions of infant females are missing, having been aborted or killed at birth or done in by neglect and underfeeding. 

An estimated hundred million girls in Africa and the Middle East have been genitally mutilated by clitoridectomy (excision of the clitoris) or infibulation (excision of the clitoris, labia minor, and inner walls of the labia majora, with the vulva sewed almost completely shut, allowing an opening about the circumference of a pencil). The purpose of such mutilation is to drastically diminish a woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure, insuring that she remains her husband’s compliant possession. Some girls perish in the excision process (usually performed by an older female with no medical training). Long term consequences of infibulation include obstructed menstrual flow, chronic infection, hurtful coitus, and complicated childbirth. 

In much of the Middle East, women have no right to drive cars or appear in public unaccompanied by a male relative. They have no right to initiate divorce proceedings, but can be divorced at the husband’s will. 

In Latin American and Islamic countries, men sometimes go unpunished for defending their “honor” by killing their allegedly unfaithful wives or girlfriends. In fundamentalist Islamic Iran, the law explicitly allows for the execution of adulterous women by stoning, burning, or being thrown off a cliff. 

In countries such as Bangladesh and India, women are murdered so that husbands can remarry for a better dowry. An average of five women a day are burned in dowry-related disputes in India and many more cases go unreported. In Bihar, India, women found guilty of “witchcraft” are still burned to death. In modern-day Ghana, there exist prison camps for females accused of being witches. In contrast male fetish priests in Ghana have free reign with their magic practices. These priests often procure young girls from poor families that are said to owe an ancestral debt to the priest’s forebears. The girls serve as the priests’ sex slaves. The ones who manage to escape are not taken back by their fearful families. To survive, they must either return to the priest shrine or go to town and become prostitutes. 

Millions of young females drawn from all parts of the world are pressed into sexual slavery in what amounts to an estimated $7 billion annual business. More than a million girls and boys, many as young as five and six, are conscripted into prostitution in Asia and perhaps an equal number in the rest of the world. Pedophiles from the United States and other countries fuel the Asian traffic. Enjoying anonymity and impunity abroad, these “sex tourists” are inclined to treat their acts of child rape as legal and culturally acceptable.