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.

Michelle Wie blazes on in golf:

On Monday she became the first female to be invited to play on the men’s European Tour; yesterday she became the first female to make it through the first qualifying stages for the men’s US Open event.

The Hawaiian can even claim to be the first female to win a professional men’s tournament as her level-par round of 72 at the Turtle Bay Resort on her home island of Oahu was the best score in the field of 40. It was a nerveless display as only three players went forward to final qualifying in New Jersey on 5 June.

Unsurprisingly she’s ruffling some feathers on the women’s professional tour (where she hasn’t yet won a tournament – but then again she is only 16). But I think she’s on the right track: if she’s going to compete with the men – with those who are the best – she’s got to do it right from the start, and match them all along the way.

And there are an awful lot of stereotypes about
women in sport that she could help to overcome; in Australia, Nadeene Latif, a weightlifter who won a medal at the Commonwealth Games, is finding schools are just not interested in having her visit. Why? She’s a weightlifter.

Latif, a 53 kilogram competitor and as petite as the former gymnast she once was, says it is not the issue of drugs in sport or the individual nature of weightlifting that turns the educators off. Teachers reckon girls do not want to know about weightlifting because they do not want to get big, she says. “The teachers tell me they don’t think the sport is appealing to the students, and that they believe they shouldn’t be doing it because of their physical development at this time [of puberty], but studies show this is when some weight bearing exercise is helpful.

Oddly enough, I think of all sports I might have done, weightlifting is the one that might have suited me best, had I been given the opportunity. I put on muscle very easily, and have a lot of strength in my arms and legs (even if endurance hasn’t ever been my thing). But I can imagine the hysterics that would have caused at my “ladies college”. My suggestion that we play football (soccer) was dismissed out of hand, even though as I pointed out, it was a far less dangerous sport than the hockey which was for some reason considered a proper “girls” game.