At The Dark End of the Street

From the Washington Post:

In the segregated American South, a white man could rape a black woman with little fear of legal or social recourse, and black women lived in a persistent state of apprehension. Rape was used as a weapon of terror in the subjugation of black women, their families and whole communities.

In "At the Dark End of the Street," Danielle L. McGuire writes that white men raped black women and girls "with alarming regularity and stunning uniformity," with some victims as young as 7. While some readers will rightly be stunned by that assertion, many African American women will recognize a commonly acknowledged danger.

But "At the Dark End of the Street" is a story of courage. The women did tell, again and again. Many went to police before they went to the hospital and were supported by families and friends who corroborated their stories, at great risk. White control of the justice system meant that relatively few men were ever arrested and many fewer were ever convicted. McGuire reports that between 1940 and 1965, only 10 Mississippi white men were convicted of raping black women and girls. Although rape was a capital offense in many Southern states, no white man was ever executed for raping a black woman.

Japan: Women Don't Count

From the Times Online:

The new chief executive of one of Japan’s larger companies sat up late into the night recently puzzling over the accounts. He simply could not work out why there seemed to be so many more people working in the office than appeared on the books.

An assistant explained it to him the next day: we don’t count the women.

Gender equality advocates and women’s groups say that, for as long as anyone can remember, the Japanese political world has done much the same — ignored the interests of half the population, discounted their talents and squandered an economic goldmine.

Those same groups believe that the August 30 general election, for which unofficial campaigning begins today, may represent the single biggest opportunity to subvert a system that feels structurally and emotionally pitted against women.