Women's rights and global wrongs

India

This week India stands shamed on the world's stage after the airing of the documentary 'India's Daughter', about the infamous Dehli bus rape, exposed shocking levels of misogyny. Female infanticide and foeticide are widespread. Around 100 million women and girls are estimated to be victims of human trafficking and 44.5% of girls are married under the age of 18. Gang rapes are commonplace and often caste based with the result that many incidents are unreported or are simply ignored by the police.

Records produced by India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveal that a crime against women is committed every three minutes with rapes occurring every 29 minutes. Nearly one in three of the victims are under 18 and in rural areas this can lead to them being shunned by society, even by their families. This does not include the crime known as "Eve Teasing", a euphemism for the public harassment described by Indian feminists as "little rape".

Lesser known is "dowry crime". One woman dies every hour because of disputes over dowry payments given by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. Last year alone 8,233 women were killed across India and there is no sign of the problem easing.

Pakistan

Pakistan has one of the worst disparities in gender equality between women and men in economic participation and opportunity. Fewer than 25% women are in the labour market as opposed to 86% of men. Educational differences are also marked: only 67% of school-aged girls attend primary school while 31% are enrolled in secondary education. Even worse is the gap in literacy - just 42% of women can read compared to 67% of men.

Sex crimes are common. In the tribal border areas of Pakistan women are routinely gang-raped as punishment not just for crimes which they are suspected of committing but also for those carried out by their menfolk. Honour killing is also widespread and a recent increase in religious extremism has seen the targeting of female politicians and female human rights workers and lawyers.

Chad

Chad ranks the lowest in the world for gender-driven disparities in educational attainment. Fewer than 28% of women in the country can read and only 55% of school-age girls are enrolled in primary school. Both statistics are among the worst in the world. Murders, beatings, underage marriage, and sexual violence are commonplace and considered so unremarkable by the authorities that accurate records are difficult to uncover. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that general instability has been the norm within the country for decades and the perpetrators are not only armed groups and bandits but also members of the Chadian security forces.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Torn apart by a long civil war, the DRC is one of the most violent places on earth. Throughout the fighting women were always on the front line and suffered accordingly. As happens so often in modern warfare, especially in Africa rape is used as a military tactic but in this country the attacks were so brutal and systematic that UN investigators were moved to describe them as "unprecedented in modern times". Since 1996 the UN estimates that 200,000 rapes have been committed though they admit that the figure is probably on the conservative side. Many of the victims died during the attacks while others have been infected with HIV.

Sudan

While the position of most Sudanese women has improved in the aftermath of the recent civil war which ended in 2005 with the creation of South Sudan the plight of those in Darfur has worsened. Abduction, rape or forced displacements have affected the lives of around one million women.

For decades, the women of Sudan have been suffering under article 152 of the country's penal code, an inhumane, vicious and notorious law which states that any conduct or clothing considered to be in violation of public decency can be punished with 40 lashes. As a result countless women have been subjected to this draconian measure. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Sudan, with sentences which include capital punishment.

Guatemala

"Femicide", the illegal killing of women as a result of gender is a common problem in Guatemala and it shows no sign of abating. Since 2000, over 3,000 Guatemalan women have been murdered. According to figures obtained by Amnesty the majority of the victims are in the 18-36 age group and most of them are students, housewives, domestic employees, unskilled workers, members or former members of street youth gangs, and sex workers. In many cases the victims are kidnapped, subjected to severe beatings, rape, sexual mutilation, or torture, then killed and subsequently deposited in public areas

Particularly at risk are females from the impoverished underclass who are subjected to domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies marked with hate messages cut into the flesh. Due to a weak and underfunded justice system, crimes are rarely punished.

Mali

One of the world's poorest countries, Mali has one of the worst differences between men and women in educational attainment and standards of health. To add to the misery few women escape the torture of genital mutilation, many are forced into early marriages, and one in ten dies in pregnancy or childbirth. FGM is not illegal and according to UN figures 95% of adult women have been cut. While Malian law gives women equal property rights traditional practice still discriminates against them and prevents them from inheriting property. Although women constitute 15% of the work force most of them are involved in low-paid and menial activities.

Saudi Arabia

Oil rich Saudi Arabia has a long-standing tradition of being a male oligarchy. Saudi women are treated as lifelong dependents and can only exist in society under the guardianship of a male relative. Girls and women are forbidden from traveling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from their male guardians; they are forbidden the right to drive or mix with men in public places. Breaking this law can lead to severe punishment including flogging.

Mexico

The border city of Ciudad Juárez has been called the "City of Orphans" because so many mothers have been murdered or have "disappeared." Most of the victims suffer torture, mutilation, and sexual violence before being killed while others are killed as a result of domestic violence or disputes with their partners. A study conducted by the Mexican Institute for Women in Mexico City showed that women are three times more likely than men to die at the hands of their perpetrator through tactics such as hanging, strangulation, burning, suffocation, drowning, and stabbing, and are more likely to be killed by someone they know. Although a number of initiatives have been carried out by local, state, national, and international women's movements and families of the killed women, the murders and disappearances continue and are unlikely to end any time soon.

Egypt

A poll conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation listed Egypt as the worst country for women's rights in the Arab world. Amongst the reasons were the prevalence of sexual harassment of women in public place and a general rise in violence towards women across the country. Last April a UN report on women claimed that 99.3% of women and girls are subjected to sexual harassment. Although female genital mutilation has been outlawed in the country since 1996 the practice remains endemic with 91% of women and girls - 27.2 million in all - having been subjected to cutting, according to findings by UNICEF. During the "Arab Spring" revolution Human Rights Watch reported that 91 women were raped or sexually assaulted in public in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the main site of the demonstrations. Ironically, women had been at the forefront of the revolution.