Global Deadbeats
August 19, 2009
A breathless report on global poverty in today’s New York Times makes no bones about the cause: Rotten Men. There must be a “women’s crusade” to save the world. Forget about men; they’re useless and cruel. Every peasant woman in India must be transformed into a Hillary Clinton. Here are a few of the strikingly misanthropic statements in this harangue by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn:
In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.
If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries.
In Ivory Coast, one research project examined the different crops that men and women grow for their private kitties: men grow coffee, cocoa and pineapple, and women grow plantains, bananas, coconuts and vegetables. Some years the “men’s crops” have good harvests and the men are flush with cash, and other years it is the women who prosper. Money is to some extent shared. But even so, the economist Esther Duflo of M.I.T. found that when the men’s crops flourish, the household spends more money on alcohol and tobacco.
In a slum outside the grand old city of Lahore, a woman named Saima Muhammad used to dissolve into tears every evening. A round-faced woman with thick black hair tucked into a head scarf, Saima had barely a rupee, and her deadbeat husband was unemployed and not particularly employable. He was frustrated and angry, and he coped by beating Saima each afternoon.
And why does everyone benefit when women enter the work force and bring home regular pay checks? One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we’ve come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn’t afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week.
What’s the solution to this reign of global deadbeats? Big bucks for women. Not only are women saints, but they are born with hidden financial management skills that will bring an end to all poverty on earth. The only reason women didn’t rule the world sooner is that there weren’t enough humanitarian agencies to give them a boost.
The women pictured in this report look stunning in their colorful saris and African dresses. The photographers were bowled over by this flagrant femininity. I wonder how their daughters will look a few years from now. When their traditional cultures have been killed off along with the sex roles that sustained them, will they wear the denim uniforms of Western women? When social chaos engulfs them and their children, will they wear fancy suits? Obviously, the men will be wearing aprons. Already in China they do much more housework than American men, we are told. Now there’s a way of life we can envy.
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