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The image of the 21st century woman is confident, prosperous, glowing with health and beauty.

But for many of the 3.3 billion female occupants of our planet, the perks of the cyber age never arrived. As International Women’s Day is celebrated today, they continue to feel the age-old lash of violence, repression, isolation, enforced ignorance and discrimination.

“These things are universal,” says Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of New York-based Equality Now. “There is not one single country where women can feel absolutely safe.”

In spite of real progress in women’s rights around the globe – better laws, political participation, education and income – the bedrock problems that have dogged women for centuries remain. Even in wealthy countries, there are pockets of private pain where women are unprotected and under attack. (more…)

I was so eager to read the memoirs of this great Marxist historian that I could not wait to read it. Finished it on the plane last night. What a big disappointment. You can be a great historian and write a lousy memoirs. You don’t even learn much about who he is from reading it. You learn some about the times but I would rather read his The Age of Extremes (a history of the 20th century). Now that is a fine piece of work.

I think that the problems with this memoirs is this: to write a good memoirs 1) you need to think that you are somewhat interesting; 2) you need to be a good story teller; 3) you need to be comfortable talking about yourself. That does not apply here. (more…)