Discrimination against women has always existed in all cultures. It is wrong to assume the stereotype that women in Eastern countries are always oppressed.

For example, John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism made more comment in the USA that Fatima Jinnahs run for the Presidency of Pakistan. It was not considered unusual. Before Independance two women had been President of India’s Congress Party: 50 years before Margaret Thatcher led the British Conservatives. Women have led both India and Pakistan.

Yes, there are double standards. Originally that did not imply superior and inferior  but rather a woman’s role included enactment of dark mysteries. The politics of history and tribalism has since  distorted it. It seems that discrimination may be even hardest in the village where traditions are seen as the lifeblood of survival.

 Ideally, men may arrange the exterior world but in the Asian world where home is the most fundamental institution she is creator and mistress. The woman is all that is beautiful and graceful.

 In Islam male and female approach Allah equally. In Hinduism the role of woman has changed with the rise of Brahman power during feudal times after the decline of Buddhism, and again under Britain.    Add to this the layers of caste and sub-caste.  The Hindu laws of Manu a woman must obey her husband as a god even if he is a cruel tyrant, In contrast, Vatsayayana a writer of the Kama sutra said if a woman does not experience pleasure with her husband she could leave. She is an active participant in love making.

 Young men sent to courtesans, not for sex, but to be taught music, poetry. good manners and the cultivated manners of gentleman.  Trained in the 64 sciences and arts, including the arts of love. They were more like in Japans greatest periods, but just as the US invasion stripped to whoredom, so did Britian to India’s nayikas. They were not common whores.

Indeed the confident pride of many Indian and Pakistani women in their femininity makes many feel that Western liberationists are gratuitous slogan wavers of self indulgence that is too far removed from the harshness of life Asian men and women.

 Men and women are equal but masculine and feminine energies see the world from different perspectives.

Vive Le Difference!