ST. LOUISE POST-DISPATCH
Kids pay a high price in bias of women

Mulu Melka was 11 when she was abducted. The kidnapping of girls is widespread in many parts of rural Ethiopia, where Mulu lives.

Most abducted girls are raped by their captors and then forced to "marry" them. Mulu managed to escape unharmed.

But her luck ran out earlier this year when her family forced her to marry a much older man, a complete stranger she later learned was HIV-infected. She ran away, but she is terrified of being kidnapped again. Mulu is only 13.

Coco was 18 when she left Romania for a promised restaurant job in Ireland. The job was a ruse.

When she arrived, she was taken to an apartment where she was imprisoned, beaten and forced to work as a prostitute. She was freed two months later after police uncovered the sex trafficking ring.

The stories of Mulu and Coco are among the wrenching and all-too-common experiences included in a new report on gender equality and the state of the world’s children.

The report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, paints a grim portrait of the lives of millions of girls and women worldwide who face discrimination, poverty and violence, primarily because of their gender.

Gender discrimination starts before birth with sex-selection techniques used to screen for boys.

In China, India and some other Asian countries, boys are preferred and girls often are killed in infancy.

Girls in many parts of the world are less likely than boys to attend school beyond the primary grades, if they get an education at all.

Young women are victimized by forced marriages, involuntary virginity tests, genital mutilation and so-called "honor" killings.

In both developed and developing countries, women work longer hours for lower pay.

The numbers paint the big picture:

- Worldwide, 36 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 were married or in a common-law union before they turned 18.

- About 150 million girls and 73 million boys under age 18 are victims of forced sexual intercourse and other forms of physical and sexual violence.

- About 1.8 million children around the world have been forced into prostitution.

- In parts of Africa and the Caribbean, young women ages 15 to 24 are up to six times more likely to be infected with HIV than young men their age. In part, it’s physiological. Women’s anatomy puts them at higher risk. But it’s also because women don’t have the power to negotiate sex or condom use.

- In India, it is estimated that more than 5,000 women are killed each year because their in-laws consider their dowries inadequate.

Children pay the highest price for bias against women. Those born to women who have not been educated are less likely to survive infancy or grow up healthy than those born to educated women.

Children born to women who are not involved in making household decisions are less likely to eat nutritious meals. HIV infection among women greatly heightens the risk to their children.

"Gender equality and the well-being of children go hand in hand," UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman wrote in a foreword to the report.

Some of UNICEF’s recommendations may seem controversial: abolishing school fees, which often hinder girls’ participation in education; quotas to ensure that women have the opportunity to serve in government; government funding for programs aimed at eliminating gender discrimination; legislation to protect the interests of women in areas of property law and inheritance rights.

It may take radical shifts in thinking and tradition - and, in some cases, shortterm financial hardship - but the recommendations would pay off in the end. In many ways, the United States stands ahead of most of the world.

In education, for example, women now make up the majority of many medical and law school classes. But gender discrimination persists here as well.

An estimated 2 million to 4 million women are battered every year by a man they know; 1,400 women a year die from an assault by a husband or boyfriend.

The campaign to achieve gender equality in this country and around the world is a bandwagon worth jumping on.

The United States can do its part by signing the U.N. treaty on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.

Ours is the only industrialized nation that has not signed the treaty, drafted in 1979 and ratified by 185 nations. Conservatives have criticized the treaty, saying it promotes lawsuits, family planning and interference in parenting. Nonsense.

Empowering women empowers the family.

Eliminating gender bias and discrimination could change the fate of girls like Mulu and Coco around the world. They deserve protection, education and a fighting chance at a brighter future.