U.S. ranks 70th in the world in political empowerment of women

After the treatment Hillary Clinton received during the 2008 Democratic primary, I was not surprised to learn today in Ruth Marcus’ column, submitted to the Washington Post from Davos, that the United States ranks 31st in the Global Gender Gap Index – and hey, look at this: we rank 70th in the category of political empowerment.

As I’ve suggested before, America should be embarrassed to lecture the rest of the world on human rights issues - what with its treatment of women, and it’s recent experiments in using torture to obtain intelligence information from “enemy combatants” picked up off the streets in various countries without benefit of formal charges.

But back to the gender gap. Marcus reports:

The focus is on the gap between men and women in each country rather than women’s overall levels of achievement there, so countries are ranked based on the gender differential rather than development level. At the top of this year’s heap, once again, were the Scandinavian countries: Iceland ranked first, followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden. But the rest of the top 10 was a global grab bag: New Zealand was number five, then South Africa, Denmark, Ireland, the Philippines and Lesotho. At the bottom was Yemen, with Chad, Pakistan, Benin, Saudi Arabia and, surprising to me, Turkey, which was a notch below Iran.

The United States ranked No. 31, about where it’s been for the last few years but worse than its No. 23 ranking from the first survey, in 2006. This relative backsliding is unusual: Of the 115 countries that have been covered in all four years, 97 improved their rankings.

Read more of the shameful details here.

A Buddhist’s Take on the Global Financial Crisis: Enlightened Altruism

It seems ironic to come across Gordon Mijuk’s piece in the Dow Jones Newswires on Matthieu Ricard’s Buddhist take on the global financial crisis.

Mijuk writes:

Shrouded in his red Buddhist robe, Matthieu Ricard was hard to miss amid the sea of black and gray business suits that crowded the halls at the World Economic Forum.

His take on the global financial crisis and the fast economic downturn, however, folded almost neatly into the grim view that was shared by many business leaders during the panel discussions in Davos.

Also, his solution sounded somewhat familiar.

"This crisis shows that a system based on egoistic interest is dysfunctional," Ricard said. "It has created the lose-lose situation in which we find ourselves now."

Ricard, who was born in 1946 in Paris to French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, turned to Buddhism some 40 years ago after completing his doctoral thesis in molecular genetics.

While he regularly seeks solitude and seclusion in the Himalayas, Ricard has a hands-on approach to life.

Besides being the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, Ricard is a renowned photographer who also has written several best-selling books about Buddhism and science. He is heading a nonprofit organization in Nepal that is providing medical care and education to children.

"One way out of this crisis is to follow what I would call an enlightened altruism," Ricard said. "This crisis has shown that we don't work in isolation but that there is an interdependence. So what we need to do is to work together and consolidate the interest of the economy, human beings and the environment. This could be a win-win situation."

Or, in other words: Yes, we can.