The Lancet recently released news that the global maternal mortality has declined – these results are controversial in that other estimates don’t exactly agree. I am not going to discuss the controversy surrounding the data as the debates focus on developing countries, not developed countries like the US and Western Europe

One area that struck me was the US maternal mortality rate. This is the chances of a women dying due to pregnancy.

The US always did poorly compared to the rest of the developed world…but the news is getting worse. According to the Lancet article, the US maternal mortality was 13 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000 (confidence interval 12-15) but in 2008 had risen to 17 deaths per 100,000 live births. To put that in context, this rate is more than twice the estimate for Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore and 21 of the 22 Western European countries.

Some have stated that the apparent increase is related to changes in definitions, but it is also likely that the United States’ poor results in maternal mortality rates are tied to its having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world. In 1998 there were 1,671 births per 1,000,000 capita compared with less than 700 births per 1,000,000 capita for the other countries listed. Why does this matter? Pregnant teenagers and their infants face significantly greater health risk than pregnancy women in their 20’s; this includes a maternal mortality rate of five times higher in the developing world.

Within all the debates in the United States about health care reform one thing that was missing was a set of clear facts. As people rally for better maternal care around the world, let’s also make sure that the United States takes better care of its own mothers.

The bloggers, both male and female, foreign and Moroccan, offer a variety of perspectives on the issue. Sexual harassment is defined by intimidation, bullying, or coercion of a sexual nature and is, by all accounts, something that happens the world over.

Liz, a Fulbright scholar working in Agadir, in southern Morocco, compares her experiences in the United States, Egypt, and Morocco in this excellent blog post. Of her experiences in Morocco, she remarks:

My experiences with sexual harassment in Morocco have been 99.9% verbal. Unlike in Cairo, where I was often physically grabbed on the street, here the harassment comes mainly in the form of catcalls. It can be anything from a man whispering “Ca va?” as I pass on the street, to a glue-sniffing teenage boy in my old neighborhood shouting broken vulgarities at me, to a man following me and a friend for 15 minutes, asking us all the way if he can practice his English with us. In more escalated cases, men in cars will follow women, commanding them to get in, or will use a crowded city bus as an excuse to grope and fondle.

Patriarchy in Morocco

The blogger notes her realization that sexual harassment is about power struggle rather than sex itself, linking to another excellent post on the matter and, assessing how the paradigm relates to her country of residence, states:

How do these ideas apply to the Moroccan context? Firstly, it’s hard to argue with the assertion that Arab states, Morocco included, are patriarchal. Family is perhaps the paramount social institution (often, multiple generations live together under one roof), and within the family roles and authority are clearly defined: Younger members defer to older ones, women defer to men. Women are, first and foremost, wives and mothers, roles which relegate women to the home, whereas men have freedom of mobility. This structure leads to what Kandiyoti refers to as the “patriarchal bargain”: younger women buy into a social structure that restricts and subordinates because someday, as older matriarchs, they will be able to restrict and subordinate the wives of their sons.

Experiences of prejudice

Bisahha is a blog written by a Dutch anthropologist living in Rabat, Morocco’s coastal capital. In a lengthy post documenting her feeling of otherness, the blog’s author assesses how that otherness affects her treatment on the street as a woman:

All women receive attention on Moroccan streets, but I doubt a Moroccan woman is told in syrupy slick English that she is “very niiiiiice,” or that he “likes your size.”

Peace Corps volunteer Duncan, writing about racism in Morocco, touches on a similar theme. He notes that foreign women who look Arab are often subject to different treatment than other foreign women:

If a woman appears Moroccan, different dress and behavior is expected of her. White female volunteers certainly receive harassment, but with my limited experience I would argue that it is of a different sort. Because of her appearance, the volunteer who (sort of) appears Moroccan was held to the standard expected of Moroccan women, exposing the double standard. Dressed conservatively by American standards, but with her hair uncovered, the volunteer received lots of vulgar sexual harassment from Moroccans – harassment that a white woman would probably not get in the same situation. Swimming in the ocean, the volunteer received vulgar invitations that a white volunteer probably would not receive in the same situation. In her site, the volunteer was assaulted in public, in plain view of several people. When asked, after the fact, why they didn’t come to her assistance, the people said, “Because she looked Moroccan.” The volunteer speaks Arabic well, making it easier to confuse her as Moroccan. She says that she sometimes intentionally makes mistakes so that people will be more likely to perceive her as American.

Men’s view of women

The discussion comes full circle in a blog post by Moroccan Abdelilah Boukili, whose blog is based on questions asked on BBC World’s Have Your Say. Asking the question, “do men need protecting from themselves?” the blogger assesses various dress codes and clothing traditions across the Arab world, noticing the emphasis on women’s modesty. He concludes:

Men should have control over themselves. They shouldn’t be controlled by instinct and fantasy. Women should dress for self-respect, not by wearing a burqa and also by not wearing clothes that reveal too much when they are sure they can be seen just as a sex object and not as persons whose personality should be respected.

Sexual harassment in Morocco

Although the four bloggers quoted above offer excellent perspectives on sexual harassment in Morocco, each person’s experience is unique and none of these should be taken for gospel. Those interested in further reading on gender issues in Morocco might be interested in Fatima Sadiqi’s excellent book, Women, Gender, and Language in Morocco, or in the following blogs, which regularly cover such topics: 760 Days in Morocco: the experiences of an American Muslim in Morocco and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: a blog by Moroccan-American Sarah Alaoui.

This blog-post was originally published at Global Voices Online on September 1, 2009.

Society has bred young men to believe that if they don’t see women that way, then they are weak and submissive. By targeting women, we have thereby targeted men – we have set them up to be angry and confused with our expectations that they be aggressive, competitive, or in control. We have told them that if they don’t subscribe to these beliefs and the corresponding behaviors, they will not fit into our society. Men commit most of the violence against women.

The words we use create an umbrella under which all further interactions will be shaded. That is, they lay out a context; they are the background, the foundation onto which everything else is built. It’s like providing the world with rose-colored glasses, except the color is much less pleasant.

Youth and social norms

In childhood, there is no greater insult to a young man than to tell him that he acts “like a girl.” Parents coach their boys that they need to be strong and impenetrable, never to cry. They are inundated with blue walls and clothes and toys, and never pink. Little girls are discouraged from being too aggressive, too interested in contact sports, too opinionated, or even from having their hair cut short.

Unfortunately, these verbal lessons follow us for the rest of our lives.  In teenage years, a young woman with many suitors is a “slut,” and a young man pursuing many girls, a “stud.” Among adults, the word “bitch” is thrown around with not a second thought, sometimes not even maliciously.  In marriage, a woman is expected to take the name of her male spouse, and is the subject of ridicule or suspicious speculation if she doesn’t. Observers think that they know something about her: she’s difficult; she’s “independent;” she’s “one of those.”

Prejudice and language

This language lends to the overall perception of what “ought to be.” When men commit domestic violence, for example, they do not think about their place in society or how they were taught to be strong and aggressive. They operate from a much deeper place– a place so deep that they don’t even know that it is there. This culture instills in them that they should be strong and aggressive when they’re young; they never think about WHY they do what they do.

Racial prejudice often operates the same way. If when you were young, your parents told you that certain groups of people were “dirty,” it would take a lot of work on your part as an adult to undo what your parents had taught you. Even then, you might have a hard time not thinking that those people were dirty, even if you knew it would be wrong in society to say it out loud. It would take even more to believe that those people were in fact, not dirty.

Gender roles and language

There is awareness to the inequality of men and women; we are not in the world of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique any longer. When she released that revolutionary text about a women’s place in 1950s America, this was all newly articulated. Now, the state of gender roles is well covered. There is concern about the mixed messages we give boys, the double standards we have for single men and women, and the disparate wage gap. However, boys still don’t want to be “girly,” women can’t be too “dolled up,” and the wage gap is huge.

Only in a world where only “men” are created equal can there be violence against women. We must first unravel the social fabric that allows this inequality, and re-craft it into a space where everyone is actually equal. And we can do that by first changing the way we speak.

Similarly, stimulus packages will almost certainly have an inherent assumption that the male is the breadwinner and spender and so any funds should be sent in his direction. It is of course the women who overwhelmingly procure the food and essentials for family life.  It is only some three decades since British minister Barbara Castle combated this in serious way. She took away the child tax breaks from the men who usually got them, and made them into  child benefits – payable directly to mothers.

It was a fiscally neutral, socially beneficial and gender balancing initiative of a kind that bears examination now. If it was necessary in an advanced economy that prided itself on its policies of equality then similar moves to direct funds and help to women and children are even more essential in the developing world.

Both globally and at national level the way to stimulate economies is to increase women’s earning power and spending power, through education and ensuring their control over family planning decisions.  Women are stimulating in more ways than one!