Monday, August 27, 2007

What's 'good' for women isn't always good for children

Feminism and what is best for children are not necessarily synonymous. This is shown by New Zealand's ranking in the Save the Children Mothers' Index Rankings for 2007.

In ranking Children the report takes into account mortality rate for under fives, percentage of under-fives who are moderately or severely underweight, education enrollment and access to water.

In ranking Women they look at maternal mortality, attendance at births by skilled personnel, use of contraception, female life expectancy, female schooling, participation in government and ratio of female earnings to male.

New Zealand rates 4th of the "more developed" countries for mothers, 3rd for women but only 19th for children.

Take a country like Italy, where women rank only 19th (presumably because of more traditionalism, the edicts of catholicism, less govt assistance for single mothers etc) their children rank 1st.

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