Zoe Williams today is doing the usual “provocative columnist” thing in The Guardian, being sarky about Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues, and Ensler’s new anti-violence effort centred on New York.

I can’t disagree that from more sophisticated cultures than American, The Vagina Monologues is rather lame and embarrassing – that if you don’t have a hang-up about the word the show is distinctly thin, and some of the portrayal of other cultures is less than understanding. Still, for the audience for which it was originally written, and for many others around the world, it works.

Ditto with the anti-violence initiative. No, New York may be far from the worst place in the world for violence against women, but everywhere can benefit from such initiatives.

Just to put that in perspective, a horrific story about the murder of a nine-year-old girl who, it is thought, was trying to save her mother from a violent partner.

Mollie was found with blood and vomit surrounding her head. Her mother was discovered near by, moving and moaning, and attempting to get up. Both had serious head injuries. A claw hammer was lying on top of the bed.
Mollie died the next day. A post-mortem examination showed that she had at least two blunt impact injuries to her head and face, causing skull fractures and brain damage.

It is the kind of violence that, had the mother (who reading between the lines is from a poor socio-economic background) been killed would never have even made The Times. A classic case: a history of violence, previous threats to kill … and anything that can publicise these risks for women (and children) and help them get out of such circumstances should be applauded, no matter how gauche it might look to the sophisticated.

An irritatingly vague piece in the Observer today (couldn’t they have managed a figure or two in it?) finds that Pregnancy focuses girls’ minds on education. The line is that girls who get pregnant are often those who are disillusioned with or who have already left school, but after pregnancy they go back to school and work towards a professional future for themselves.

Seems sensible enough, and it is always good to see “teen mums” not just being regarded as a welfare burden. But I can’t help wondering if it is pregnancy precisely that has this effect, or the attention and services offered.

If you got to these girls before they were pregnant and offered the same services, would you not get a similar outcome? And without the babies…?

Norway is now the richest country (in terms of GDP per capita) in the world. A good percentage of that money is going to maintain the living standards of women and children:

Another sign of contentment and economic security is the country’s fertility rate. Norwegian mothers have more children per head than anywhere else in Europe except Iceland and Ireland. Norway also has among the highest level of female participation in the workforce. Squaring the circle is maternity leave that stretches to 42 weeks on full pay.

There’s the answer, for all those keen to work out why Europe’s birth rate overall is so low.

America’s of course is not, but many of its pregnancies are less than good news. This is, it seems to me, an astonishing figure:

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a third of all U.S. girls become pregnant before they turn 20; 80 percent of them are unmarried.

U.S. teens are more likely to have sexual intercourse before age 15 and to become pregnant than teens in England and Wales, France and Sweden… The study also found that Western European teens are likelier to be in a committed relationship when they have sex. U.S. teens also have a higher rate of infection and STDs — due to lower condom use, according to the report.

What’s the difference? Religion and private medicine are probably the two main factors, I’d suggest.

If, for selfish reasons, you were to choose who NOT to be born as, an Aboriginal woman in Australia – particularly in remote traditional communities – would probably be right up there.

This account is horrific (not for the sensitive) – the following quote is only one of the milder stories:

Rogers also detailed cases in which girls of 10 and 12 were handed over as “promised wives” to old men who took them away, with the permission of their family, and sexually assaulted them.

So what’s being done? A service for victims has been scrapped, and the federal government is suggesting a summit, which the Northern Territory government is planning not to attend.