Borrowed from the Independent UK's Woman's Day Coverage
1% of the titled land in the world is owned by women
A baby girl born in the UK is likely to live to 81 - but if she is born in Swaziland, she is likely to die at 39
70% of the 1.2 bn people living in poverty are women and children
21% of the world's managers are female
62% of unpaid family workers are female
9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women
Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80
£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector
85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.
700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)
Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men
Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men
67% of all illiterate adults are women
1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)
1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)
In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms
In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies
12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)
Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004
Also see this report from the UN on the fact that women are denied representation, making war on poverty hard to win, this story on advances made by women around the world, this harrowing report on hardships still imposed on Afghan women bu Muslim zealots, and this item on the fact that men in Britain are being advised that failing to obtain explicit consent for sex could result in rape charges--in other words, men are being told that if a woman is unconscious and a guy has sex with her, that ain't consensual.
Thanks, Holly. Without statistics, we might live (uncomfortably) in a delusional state, particularly with propaganda machines working so hard to tell us that feminism is unnecessary, and our problems come from our own making, not from gender disparity. We need to be reminded that – while others start macho wars for “our protection” – we must protect ourselves from our false “protectors.”