Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Feminism, Angry Arab News Service, and the vicissitudes of "anti-Zionism"

Angry Arab News Service recently had a post title which read "Feminism in Israel????" I suppose the point of that is to scoff at the notion that an Apartheid Colonialist Settler Entity such as Israel could ever harbor such a thing as an actual feminist. His latest post on the women's struggle is called "sexism in the Middle East" and it consists of the following three sentences from this source:
In Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, women earn 25 cents or less for every dollar men earn. Saudi Arabian and Palestinian women earn only 16 and 12 cents respectively to the male dollar. In Mongolia, women earn 87 cents for every dollar men earn and in Mozambique they earn 90 cents.
There is something missing here that we would normally expect to see, and I don't mean the failure to refer to Libya as the "Gt. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya." What about Israel? Angry Arab is obsessed with Israel bashing. Every other post is something that makes Israel look bad with the title "This is Zionism." So how does Israel do when women's salaries are compared to men's? According to Ha'aretz, which is complaining about the situation:
"the Institute for Women's Policy Research, in a report last September [2008], found that women working in full-time, year-round positions nationwide earned 77 cents for every dollar a man earned."
In that respect the Lttle Satan appears to resemble the Big Satan. In the US in 2007, something called "The National Committee on Pay Equity" stated
among full-time workers, women make only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men.
So Israel does vastly better than every Arab country listed although not as good as Mongolia? Of course, according to this, the "Gross National Income (per capita)" of Israel is "$17,046.40 per person" while that of Mongolia is "$344.88" (and that of Mozambique is "$195.82 per person"). Men and women alike, it would seem, are paid enough for mere subsistence in those enlightened places. So now, as Paul Harvey would say, you have the rest of the story. Always glad to help out a blogging colleague.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

No comments: