We all know that we are still far from a world where men and women have equal rights and opportunities. Thousands of years in which patriarchy was a matter of course and the role of women in looking after their husbands and children cannot simply be dissolved within a few decades.
In Germany we are mainly concerned with problems such as the fact that women earn significantly less money than men, invest a lot more energy and time in household chores and child-rearing, occupy fewer management positions and are clearly underrepresented in our parliament (approx. 30 percent women and 70 percent men). In addition, women are more likely to be victims of violent crimes, sexual harassment and, unlike men, are still insulted as sluts if they are not monogamous. We are not alone with these problems, but in global society. However, in some parts of the world things are far more misogynistic than here.
In Syria and Egypt, for example, so-called "honor killings", in which a man kills his wife because she was unfaithful to him, is punished with significantly lower penalties than other homicides. In Pakistan, a woman's testimony is in certain cases only half as valuable as a man's: in order to refute a male witness, there must be two women who contradict his testimony in the same way.
Almost every year we celebrate some steps on the way to more equality as a huge success: That women in Saudi Arabia have finally been able to drive cars since 2019. That Ireland voted for the right to abortion in 2018. That Bibi Steinhaus was the first woman to whistle in the Bundesliga in 2017. Of course, we should appreciate and be happy about such progress. But if we are really honest, look around the world and soberly take stock, there is reason to fear: the part that we have already completed on the way to equality is probably smaller than the part that still lies ahead of us .
Sources used: Globalcitizen.org, worldbank.org, spiegel.de, tagesschau.de