PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - THIS year’s International Women’s Day finds women enjoying more prosperity and privileges than at any other time in human history. Yet this is also the first time in history that there have been so few women in the world relative to men.
In all Western nations, women are now more educated, earn higher incomes, and have more rights than their female ancestors did. To be sure, perfect equity has still not been attained, with women on average earning 76 per cent of men’s incomes for the same work. But it is an ongoing debate as to whether this is due to the tattered remnants of sexism or whether it is an economic consequence of biology in terms of time and resources spent on child-rearing.