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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (4618)	12/12/2000 12:28:07 AM
From: E	Respond to of 28931

<<African women are as independent as American women, unless in a Muslim area. >> That's the PC thing to say, but most African societies, even non-Muslim ones, are very patriarchal. That has a meaning that is very relevant to how independent many African woman can be. A few items on this.... Here's a paragraph from a paper presented at a 1998 conference of the Southern African Development Conference. In the African setting there are several traditional practices and customs which keep African women in cultural subordination, and put them in such a low bargaining position, that they have little, if any control over decisions which affect their bodily integrity. Polygyny, brideprice, leviratic and sororate marriages, child and forced marriage, female genital mutilation ("FGM"), female religious bondage and general traditional rules in relation to women, greatly impede a woman's ability to exercise her rights.... This is from a US State Dept. paper on Botswana TITLE: BOTSWANA HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993 DATE: JANUARY 31, 1994 AUTHOR: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE BOTSWANA Botswana's laws and legal system provide for a broad range of individual rights and freedoms, which are widely observed in practice. However, women face significant legal and practical discrimination, and violence against them is a growing problem. This is from another paper prepared for the SADC by Fitnat Adjetey and Rebecca Osei-Boateng Wife Beating: Today's cultures have strong historical, religious and legal legacies that reinforce the legitimacy of wife beating. Under the British common law which was adopted by Ghana the law recognized the husband as ruler of the home. As part of the husband's authority the common law authorized his use of violence against his wife as long as he used a stick no broader than his thumb. The provisions under the Ghanaian Criminal Code for the use of justifiable force may also be interpreted to mean that a husband cannot be said to have committed an offense if he beats his wife with a switch no broader than his thumb for defying his authority. I won't even quote the information on the three different types of Female Genital Mutilation, clitoridectomy, excision and infibulation or "pharaonic circumcision." . sn.apc.org A United Nations Population Network paper, excerpted: Community court judges are being included in the workshops because they administer justice according to customary laws which often allow abusive husbands to go unpunished while societal pressure forces battered women to tolerate abuse rather than face the shame of divorce, especially since wife-beating is considered normal in many traditional circles. undp.org It's hard to be "independent" when you are a woman living in a certain kind of extremely patriarchal culture where, for example, it is considered okay for a husband to beat his wife so long as the stick is no thicker than his thumb. The examples above are mostly from Ghana and Botswana, which are primarily Christian countries.