EGAD

Long Way to Go

Today is International Women's Day. As these things goes, the day has an interesting history. Tracing its origins to the international socialist movement at the turn of the 20th century, one claim is that the day originally commemorated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It remains a state holiday in many Asian Communist and ex-Communist countries. As such, the day is as much focused on the economic status of women as on women's rights or safety.

Via TAPPED, Jana Goodrich is promoting a series of articles she wrote on the gender wage gap a little while back. Very readable, if you're up for some slightly longer fare.

Via WorldMapper (a very cool site, I might add):

A map of the world distorted such that the area of each territory is proportional to the total number of illiterate women living there less the number of illiterate men. China and India loom especially large.

The fact that nearly every territory has nonzero area attests that, throughout most of the world, women are more likely to be illiterate than men. Here in the affluent world we have the luxury of trying to tackle the wage disparity -- a very real phenomenon that Senator Clinton is taking aim at. For perhaps the majority of the world's women, the issue is a more basic disparity in access to education.

See also: Lindsay Beyerstein has a good roundup. With bonus bicycling content.