4 Worst Places In The World For Girls

Women continue to have second-class status in many parts of the world, with little access to healthcare, education, or basic freedoms. UN's Human Development Report 2008 reveals a few spots where being a girl is a cruel fate.

Yemen
Share of women in Assembly of Representatives: Less than 1 percent
Female-to-male income ratio: 30:100
Female literacy rate: 35 percent

Nailing them young marriage wise is an ancient tradition in Yemen, with 48 percent of girls married by the time they are 18 and some brides as young as 12.

Result? Poor health for moms and precious little babies. 1 in every 39 girls die during pregnancy or childbirth, and 1 in 10 children doesn’t make it to a fifth birthday. Yemeni women live particularly restricted lives; for example, getting a passport and traveling abroad requires a husband’s or father’s permission.

Moldavia
Share of women in Parliament: 22 percent
Female-to-male income ratio: 63:100
Female literacy rate: 99 percent

First glance Moldavia looks kinda like Old Europe. The stats seem ok - hold up. Moldavia is a major slave trading state and girls are prime goods.

In a country whose per capita income (adjusted for purchasing power) is in the same league as India and Nicaragua, young women and girls often fall for recruiters’ promises of well-paying jobs abroad, only to be forced to work for pimps in places such as Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, the government’s efforts to prevent trafficking and protect victims have been weak; some government officials and police officers have even been complicit in trafficking. But things might be looking up: The first female prime minister took office this year.

Papua New Guinea
Share of women in National Parliament: Less than 1 percent
Female-to-male income ratio: 72:100
Female literacy rate: 51 percent

Girls in Papua New Guinea can expect to receive only five years of schooling. What’s worse, accusing women of sorcery is often used as a form of social “payback.” If someone unexpectedly becomes ill or dies, the grievance is often taken out on an alleged “sorcerer”—almost always a woman—who is beaten, raped, or even killed in retaliation. Meanwhile, women have four times the risk of contracting HIV as men “because their social standing does not allow them to negotiate safe sex.”

Sierra Leone
Share of women in Parliament: 13 percent
Female-to-male income ratio: 45:100
Female literacy rate: 24 percent

Sierra Leone has the unfortunate distinction of having the worst gender inequality in the world, according to the U.N. Human Development Report’s gender index, which scores countries on health, education, and economic indicators for women. One in 8 women dies during pregnancy or childbirth, and women have an abysmal life expectancy of just 43 years, one of the lowest in the world. Girls can expect to receive only six years of schooling.

On top of it all, the horrors of Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war, in which perhaps a third of the country’s women and girls suffered sexual violence, haunt women today. Widows struggle to get by, survivors of wartime rape face stigma and discrimination, and men continue to assault women with impunity. The country’s Parliament enacted laws last June that criminalize wife-beating and allow women to inherit property, but how well those measures will be enforced remains to be seen.

submitted by Foreign Policy Magazine