the invisible "burka" of our european women

[demoleft]

the title is provocative. there's been a discussion on LBN about France ban on burka, rejected by UK and US as a move that invades too much the personal sphere of cultural/religious beliefs.

i dismiss the idea that wearing burka might be a threat to public safety. that's just hysteria.
i concentrate more about the idea of the ban as a promotion of women rights and freedom.
anyway the discussion is here, for those interested:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4469348&mesg_id=4469348

now, feminism and advancement on the path of rights for women has not been a gift of State in the west, but a conquest of women movements, made of big fights and mistakes, victories and defeats, that created social gender self-consciousness which led to laws (not the opposite motion).

but what astonishes me is the easiness with which it is accepted the idea that the State/Law (very male-oriented and managed) replaces the patriarchal "Man" in the decision about what a woman can wear or not - in this case, burka.

western political/cultural leaders like to raise the voices, sometimes. especially with the weak ones - say the immigrant women or just people coming from another culture/religion. this time it is the burka in france.

now, this is what WESTERN WOMEN have to suffer every day at home, in society, in the schools/universities, in the careers, in companies and in the parliaments at all levels:

Discrimination in the European Union
Discrimination on the basis of gender is perceived by an average of 40 % of
the EU population. However, this figure is considerably higher in some countries
such as Italy (56%) and Spain (55%), where more than half of the interviewees feel it
is widespread. At 21%, people in Germany and Latvia are least inclined to hold the
view that discrimination on the basis of gender is widespread in their respective
countries.

As one might expect, women are more inclined than men to say that
discrimination on the basis of gender is widespread (43% vs. 36%). We can also
observe that people who feel that gender discrimination is widespread are far
more likely to hold the opinion that being a woman is a disadvantage (46% vs.
24% of those who think that gender discrimination is rare).

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_263_sum_en.pdf
(page 16 in particular)

and

In 1975, just over 10 percent of parliamentarians in the world were women. By 2010 that figure had risen to 18 percent. An extremely modest increase of 7% in 35 years, meaning at such a rate parity between men and women will take another 160 years.
...
‘Women are as well and sometimes better educated than men, but the political system is locked and blocked by men. As there is multi-office holding, the temptation is that this stays the same way forever. Non-multi office holding would allow more women political responsibility,’‘ Err added.

(Lydie Err, http://www.euronews.net/2010/01/28/can-positive-discrimination-the-gender-imbalance-in-europe/ )

add deficiencies in state help for single/or worker women, family running too many times weighing on the shoulder of the women only, the productive timetable of the day designed and fit for men's needs, home violence, physical/psychological violence, mobbing and stalking, and the rates of these crimes all over europe and you'll have the portrait of the invisible and this really discriminatory "burka" that thousand western women have to suffer every day.

and the first worry of sarkozy and some other european illuminated (male) leaders is?
banning the burka, of course.