Previous posters have me wondering if it is just a bridge too far, for westerners to understand what it is that third world people go through. The last generation in our country to know hardship in a sense that would have them understand global poverty and what that experience would mean, would be my parents generation. From the boomers onwards we have had relatively easy times.
We just can't understand what it must be like in a dusty refugee camp in the Syrian desert for years, or fleeing civilwar about the Horn of Africa, or being an Idian dalat mum in some dusty corner of the subcontinent where,in times of famine the mothers must suffocate their daughters with sand because there is no food for anyone.
What do we know of Cholera, Malaria etc, when the worst we cop is 'flu, or a belly ache from too much food?
On the women's issues front, how about being sold into wedlock at fourteen in Ethiopia, and having your lower body ruined because you were too small to birth properly?
Let alone the horror of GFM, or producing then having to care for ten kids?
But this happens not because they are different to us, but because of historical time and the current adverse conditions this has created in some parts of the world. The world just hasn't got around to the proliferation of the "goods" that come from the west, only the rubbish, like cluster bombs.
And we are only a few generations removed from conservative rural lifestyles ourselves.

international women's day is 102 years old, not 100! why do recitations of the day this year (2011) ignore that international women's day is based in the march of women garment workers in new york in 1909 - and that 100 years anniversary is/was 2009?

yet another revision of women's history which cuts out entirely the action of a bunch of strong, courageous women whose action should be acknowledged and affirmed, not written out of history/herstory. yet it is true that in 1911 women marched in different countries - sweden, etc - however this does not mean that 1909 doesn't count! why do we as women engage in the smothering of our own history/herstory, the rewriting of history/herstory and actually engage in a celebration which is two years late!

Paul Walter, I agree that many people living in Australia don't know how the other half live in poor third world countries, especially the women and girls.

However, you are forgetting that many Aboriginal people still live in third world conditions here in Australia.
Aboriginal women are far more likely to suffer higher domestic violence issues, stillbirths, infant mortality rates, death in childbirth, diabetes, STD's and earlier age of death than any other females in Australia.

I am sad that we are 'celebrating' 102 years of women's liberation in this country when our Aboriginal sisters are still doing it so tough.

Let's fix up our own backyard before we go on to help somewhere else.

Peter, I agree with you. If we are so equal than why do we need laws that distinguish on the basis of sex at all?

Grand slam tennis is a good analogy for the whole debate. Females argued that they were equal and so should get the same prize money as men but then only wanted to play 3 sets and of course not actually against men. That is what females call equality.

Of course in reality, women value themselves much higher than men. Changing a nappy is 'back-breaking' but the thousands of miners who die providing for their families each year (most of them in the third world) goes unmentioned.

I just don't get it. How can women write endless articles about women when men do worse on so many more social indicators? I think many modern western women are so narcisstic.

Well I changed nearly every nappy at night when I was at home from work, (she was usually snoring so much she claimed she didn’t hear), and I made the nappy changing table, complete with two sets of shelves to store clean nappies, pins and talcum powder.

And then I painted it, and also painted little gum tree leaves and banksia flowers on it.

In all, a rather good job I might say.

It is easy to see why the author has chosen to write about another country, as the state of motherhood in this country is abysmal.

- The rate of breastfeeding is well below government standard.
- High rates of smoking and drinking when pregnant (particularly in some Aborigional communities)
- Often insufficient foliate in the diet.
- Increasing rates of overweight babies being born, now with doctors having to break bones of some babies so they can be delivered.
- Very high rates of cesareans.
- Higher than necessary abortions, including late abortions.

If the child is lucky enough to be born:
- About 1 in 4 are destined to become fatherless.
- Many will be living in single parent families, and often end up welfare dependant.
- Increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, normally attributed to lack of proper food and exercise.
- Increasing rates of myopia and other eye ailments
- High rates of depression and other mental problems.
- High rates of suicide.

It is difficult to get much worse, and nothing at all to celebrate with motherhood in Australia.

In fact, an inglorious and abysmal record of motherhood.

Hooray for Evelyn.

A good essay and summary of the situation which really has nothing whatsoever to do with the "narcissism" of Western middle class women.

On the contrary as the report by Kate Ellis on the levels of violence against females (in particular) here in the land of Oz shows. It is quite shocking. The Every Mother Counts website is not at all narcissistic, nor is it about Western women.

Somehow in a few paragraphs Evelyn is supposed to deal with the entire history of the Western and world-wide feminist movement?

And all of the vastly complicated individual and collective sexual and gender based psycho-dramas, which vary from culture to culture. Which ARE the emotionally causative sub-stratum (or unconscious child-hood Oedipal script) of everything that every single one of us dramatizes in EVERY moment of our lives.

Violence against women is a hugely enormous world-wide problem. Pornography in which women and children are degraded is a huge industry, absolutely enormous on the internet.
As with the negative exploitation and killing of human beings altogether, such violence etc violates the heart of one and all.

It helps to create a toxic collective unconscious which now permeates our entire "culture", and the entire world too.
It creates an unimaginably (hell)deep reservoir of fear sorrow and anger. Have you read the "news" re all of the casual nastiness that is now the norm "out there". And of course in Parliament as dramatized by the "honorable" members. Which is now nothing more than a growling pit of adolescent hoons strutting their diminished humanity.

In my opinion the work of Lloyd deMause provides unique insights into the origins and consequences of our deadly collective psycho-dramas.

http://www.psychohistory.com/index.html