Joe Ruskey

5-17-10

Global Issues Final Project Annotated Bibliography

“Europe Leads on Women’s Rights.” BBC. 2 May 2003.

This article was extremely helpful with providing me with information on the state of

women’s rights in modern developed continents such as Europe. In the article it is said that

Europe is leading in women’s rights, and things are improving; however it also brought to my

attention how so much still needed to be done. Compared to continents like the Middle East and

Africa, Europe looks like a bastion of equality. The article reveled stats that showed that Europe

was the leader in women’s equality, but the status of women is still low. For example, in 2002

only 14% of parliament members in Great Britain are female. I hammered the point, there is still

a lot of work that needs to be done, home in my video to make people aware that first world

continents like Europe and North America may be ahead of the curve, but there is still

discrimination that goes on. The BBC is a reputable source. It is a renowned news source that

covers worldwide events and issues, and is not just contained to Britain and Western Europe.

Joffe-Walt, Benjamin. “Women’s Rights Improve Across the Middle East.” The Jerusalem Post.
3 July 2010.

This article helped me get past a lot of the common misconceptions about women’s rights

in the Middle East. According to the article, there is and has been a lot of reform going on in the

Middle East. Many intellectuals and universities have finally begun to speak out at the treatment

of the women in their community. Unfortunately in some regions there has been little

improvement. In deeply religious societies domestic violence rates are still incredibly high. I

decided to highlight this issue since domestic violence is a prevalent problem that faces women
across the world. This article made me understand that the Middle East is not some wasteland

void of understanding or equality; that there are groups of people who wish to better the status of

women. Benjamin Joffe-Walt has served as editor of the multilingual international magazine

Colors since 2007. Many of his articles have been published by news services such as The

Economist, BBC, Guardian, and the Boston Globe. He is best known for his coverage of the

Middle East and Africa. He is a winner of the Africa Print Journalism of the Year award.

Seager, Joni. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. New York: Penguin Publishers, 2009.

The Penguin Atlas was my primary source for this project. The book came with a

plethora of graphs, charts, statistics, and maps that highlighted the important hardships women

are currently struggling with. Each page is a map of the world, and each country has statistics on

the topic of the certain page. Every page also has an introduction written to explain the issue. I

used this book to outline my entire video. The Penguin Atlas is crammed with information; there

are so many topics to cover. At first I planned on having six sections, but I had to reduce my

video to three sections due to issues with length. Joni Seager earned her PhD at Clark University,

and is now a professor at Bentley University. She has written seven books on feminism and

women’s rights. She is in the process of writing two books: one on the changing climate and the

other on the AIDS epidemic. Penguin Publishers is one of the world’s primer book publishing

companies, and would only publish quality and insightful material.

Shah, Anup. “Women’s Rights.” Global Issues. 14 March 2010. 3 May 2010. <

<http://www.globalissues.org/article/166/womens-rights>

Anup Shah’s article provided a great overview on the most pressing issues concerning

women in this day and age. The article’s main focus was on women’s rights issues that affect the

entire globe, but it did provide links to specific continents and how they are affected by certain
issues that gave great information. The article also provided graphs, charts, and quotes from

various political and women’s rights leaders across the globe. Each topic was broken down and

about several paragraphs were written for each section. I used this information to summarize

each of the subjects I covered in my video. Anup Shah is the editor of the web site, Global

Issues. Global Issues has been running since 1998. The site started off as non-profit but in 2007

Global Issues started to accept donations and also started to use advertising to acquire funds. The

site’s goal is to raise awareness and to provide links to more information for people wanting to

look deeper into specific issues.

“Women’s History: Central and South America.” About. 4 May 2010.

<http://womenshistory.about.com/od/latinamerica/Central_and_South_America.htm>

About.com compiled a page on female leaders and the history of women’s rights in South

and Central America. A lot of the information was very specific, and I was not able to use it

since my project was not an in depth account on just Latin and South America; however the web

page did bring up an important point that I tried to convey in my video. The page brought to my

attention that leaders of the feminist movement and women’s right advocates have to work with

the government in order to bring change, not through it or against it. In my solutions and

overview section of my video I brought this up. About.com is a site that specializes on providing

guidance and information on a deluge of topics; you can ask for advice or research just about

anything on the site. About.com is part of the New York Times Company, and is obviously a

reputable source.