ASIA: Asian women suffer from cultural and...

ASIA: Asian women suffer from cultural and economic discrimination that has left two out of three of them illiterate with wages only two-thirds those of men, a recent United Nations study said. “There seems to be no halt in sight to the feminization of poverty in developing countries. Of the world’s poor people, 70% are already women,” said a statement issued by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. The study said women are falling further behind because the majority of women in the work force perform manual labor that requires minimal skills. As economies develop toward higher technology, women are often the first unemployed by the changes. Better education would help women adjust, but cultural bias often means that females get less and poorer quality education than males.