Consent. Here at Penn State we are reminded all the time of the importance of obtaining it before sex. There are posters everywhere, online trainings we have to go through which all raise the point that even if someone seems like they are consenting, they are not actually able to grant it in certain circumstances (like when they are drunk). By and large though the student body, we are almost entirely made up of legally aged adults are able to give consent. The issue  of consent can seem to be a grey area sometimes, but there are some boundaries that go without saying here. Could a 15 year old give consent? That’s a gray area to some. Could a 9 year old? Thankfully to the clear majority in Penn State and in the U.S that is a clear red flagged no. If only that were the case around the world.

The Iraqi parliament last month introduced a new bill that changes the legal marriage age for girls. The legal age used to be 18, and while now there is no definite legal age, the law declares that girls legally become women when they turn 9, which critics claim is a backdoor way to legalize child-marriage.

Further adding to the clear human rights violation is the portion of the bill that states a man may have sex with his wife without her consent. And moreover wives need not consent to the marriage as a whole for it to be legitimate, as only her father needs to agree to the marriage or subsequent divorce. The makers of the law are arguing that it will in fact help prevent abuse by routing marital disputes to religious courts.

This measure is a significant step backward for women’s rights in Iraq, as child marriages had been widespread in the 1970’s but was curtailed after Iraqi independence. This law, which was ratified today by the Iraqi parliament, is thought by critics to be a play to expand the power of the Shiite majority, as the law is based on their more fundamentalist Shiite readings of the Qur’an.

Though this law is new to Iraq, child marriage is not a new phenomenon.  According to the Atlantic “Child marriage is a global epidemic that occurs across regions, cultures, and religions. The number of women married as children is staggering: the United Nations estimates that one in three women aged 20 to 24 was married under the age of 18. Many of these women were even younger at the time of their marriage: nearly five million girls are married under the age of 15 every year, or about 13,000 per day.”

Child marriage affects more than just the underage brides themselves. Most countries that legally permit child marriage are underdeveloped, and the practice hurts economic growth. Girls who marry at a young age are cut off from access to education and subsequently their wages are lower, thus reducing their purchasing power.

These marriages also pose a global health risk as “Early marriage begets early pregnancy and childbearing, which is the leading cause of death for girls aged 15 to 19 in the developing world.” and beyond that stillbirths and infant mortality are 50% more likely to occur to children born of mothers under the age of 20, and the children who do survive risk high probabilities of malnutrition, prematurity, and low-birthweight.

In essence this issue cuts through to the foundation of human rights. Women and girls have the right to be in control of their bodies and their futures. Countries around the world need to bring their marriage and consent laws out of the realm of religion to protect the rights of women.

Mark Twain once said “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Which is why a recent Gallup poll stating that Hillary Clinton’s biggest selling point for her possible 2016 run is the fact that she would be the first female president leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Statistics like these are often enough disregarded when it comes to political commentary, due to their subjective nature, but this one was flounced by the media for a full 24 hours the day it came out. Why is the U.S so focused on Hillary running? And specifically why do we care that she would be the first female president?

The U.S broke ground in the last incumbentless election by electing the first black president, is Hillary just another glass ceiling to shatter? One would think that the so-called inevitability of Hillary Clinton’s run, and her decently high chances of winning would go to show that public opinion in the U.S has overcome its hesitation to elect a female, yet calls from the opposite side also seem indicative that the U.S has not progressed enough to embrace a woman in the oval office.

While Gallup found the historic precedent that the precedent a Hillary Clinton administration would set is the top reason why people support her, within that same pole the number one negative listed would be a supposed “lack of experience,” which some point as a jarringly thin way of veiling a reluctance to elect a woman president.

Because disagree with her leadership style, her political views, or even the way she has handled events in her personal life, but as a former First Lady, U.S Senator and U.S Secretary of State on paper Hillary Clinton may just be the most qualified candidate in U.S history.

But should we elect or not elect Hillary Clinton on the basis of her gender?

While obviously even to those who indicated that electing the first female president would be a strong push for voting for Hillary would not base their vote entirely on that fact, especially if they disagree with her political views and plans for her presidency, the fact that her gender is already such a major talking point does not speak highly for the United States.

The U.S is clearly in the minority when it comes to female leadership. From India’s Indira Gandhi to Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, female chief executives have graced history in many other democracies besides the U.S. Even now female presidents who are serving in South Korea, Brazil, and Malawi are making great strides in their nations histories, besides just the fact that they are female.

Even outside of the executive office the U.S lacks female leadership. Women currently account for slightly more than 50% of the U.S population, yet with a combined 101 women currently serving in both houses they only account for 19% of congress. This number has been heralded, as it is the highest in U.S history.

Within those figures only 11 women hold leadership positions in congress and out of the 46 different committees in congress only 8 of them are chaired by women (7 of which are in the Senate).

There may be calls from all across the U.S political arena for or against Hillary Clinton based on her gender, and as egregious as that may be the larger issue is not will she win, but rather what does the lack of female leaders in the U.S say about us? Time will tell if she becomes the first female president, but the more important precedent that must be set is not a woman in the executive, but a stronger push for female leaders in all aspects of U.S government.

For the past twenty years India has been at the forefront of economic and technological development. As industry booms and population in cities rise it would seem that India has become a modern state.

Yet,  some claim a dark undercurrent runs through this great progress as contradictions to liberalization are apparent when it comes to society’s view of women.

When a girl is born the popular Hindu saying is that it is “akin to the arrival of Lakshmi – the four-armed goddess of wealth, often depicted holding lotus flowers and an overflowing pot of gold.“However, women in India face discrimination and violence in both urban and rural areas. Of the G20 nations, that is the most economically advanced, India ranks second lowest  in terms of women’s rights, only above Saudi Arabia.

In this past year women’s rights and safety issues in India have come to the forefront as several infamous rape cases were heavily reported on by media across the world. In one such instance a female medical student , given the pseudonym  Nirbhaya (Fearless), was dragged off of a public bus and publicly gang-raped and eventually died due to internal injuries after she was sodomized with a metal rod. While this and several other tragedies did gain attention worldwide a problem still exists in how Indian society perceives rape and rape culture.

In Indian media instances of sexual assault and rape are often belittled by the term “eve-teasing.”  This term references the biblical Eve who tempted Adam, and also implies that women are asking for these advances and assaults. As Ranjani Iyer Mohanty claims in a column for the Wall Street Journal “Both parts of the term put the blame on the woman; she is the temptress who isn’t providing something she has promised. The man is therefore fully within his rights to take it forcibly; or at least, his actions or reactions are understandable.”

The downplaying of rape extends far beyond the media though. Indian lawmakers and judges have been known to blame provocative clothing for incidents of rape. In 1996 68 percent of surveyed judges in India said that provocative clothing is an invitation to rape and as recently as the wake of the Nirbhaya rape  a legislator saw banning skirts as a uniform in private schools as a solution for the problem of increased cases of sexual harassment.

Part of the larger picture is bridging the “two Indias” both in the sense that there are archaic views on women’s rights in a modern state, and that there is a large difference between women in rural and urban areas. Most of these notorious and highly publicized instances of rape occurred in urban areas like New Delhi or Mumbai. In rural and tribal villages, often populated by the historically discriminated former Dalit caste, these cases go unnoticed by the media and critics around the world.

However that is not to say that Indian society as a whole acts this way. Since the Nirbhaya case last year there has been a great swelling of advocation for women’s rights in India by both men and women. One important change has been breaking the silence. According to Newsweek there was a 200 percent rise in reporting of rape in just the city of Delhi, which goes to show that victims are less stigmatized.

Instances of rape, and “rape culture” in India mirror what occurs in less developed nations. As India continues to forge economic strength and feels the effects of modernization and globalization it must deal with questions of inequality in order to really call itself modern. India’s media, lawmakers, and everyday people must be willing to step up and call out what is not right.

For three years now the civil war, which the U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called an “all-encompassing disaster” has waged, causing turmoil within the state. While the supposed use of chemical weapons against citizens has been a hot topic, a new perspective concerning the role of women in the conflict has emerged. The issue of women in Syria has three components. 1.Women in Syria are plagued by a “rape crisis”2. Women in refugee camps face rape and sexual exploitation and 3. There is little female representation in peace negotiations.

As conflict continues in Syria, relief workers and organizations have warned that that sexual violence has become a “significant and disturbing feature” of the conflict.

The assistant U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Erika Feller, went as far as to say that the Syrian conflict has been”increasingly marked by rape and sexual violence employed as a weapon of war to intimidate parties to the conflict destroying identity, dignity and the social fabrics of families and communities.”

Though the threat of sexual violence plagues the women of Syria, Soraya Chemaly claims that news reports have ignored the role of sexual violence in Syria. “Gender-based, sexualized violence is broadly destabilizing to a collapsing state and its immediate neighbors,” she writes. “It is a weaponization that we don’t acknowledge and has a destructive fractal effect on society that far exceeds the parameters of any one incident of actual assault.”

Journalists in Syrian refugee camps in Jordan report that “the social structure that existed in Syria is almost entirely broken down.” In the absence of order, many women have become subjected to sexual exploitation.

These camps have been witnessing high numbers of young girls entering into marriage before the age of 15, exposing them to teen pregnancy and other adverse health effects. A 14-year-old refugee named Maya who is engaged to a 45-year-old Lebanese man shares her fear of these consequences.

“I’m marrying him so things will be better,” Maya says. “I don’t want to get married; I don’t want to have children. I’m only doing this for security. Isn’t it shameful that I’m 14 years old and I have to marry a 45-year-old man?”

These other health issues include the prevalence of UTI’s in camps and the scarcity of food.

Though these child-marriages are legal, they are still viewed by many aid-workers as exploitation due to the dowry payments. Whereas in Syria is is traditional for the groom to give the bride’s family, in these camps brides receive no more than $100.

“The men come into the camp and … they are just buying girls. Many of these men come from Jordan and the Gulf; most are seeking approval to wed a much younger woman. ” said one aid worker

Aside from child-marriages however another serious issue that women face concerning the Syrian crisis is their lack of representation at peace negotiations.

Though the British government has paid $330,000 in attempts to further engage women in peace negotiations between rebels and the Assad regime in Syria, at recent talks in London only 2 out of the 15 Syrian opposition representatives were women. Within that though, there is a push to have more women who represent the average woman in Syria, and not those who are aligned to either party.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague recently reiterated this point to Newsweek Magazine.

“Time and again you meet courageous women who are working at a local level to hold together communities torn apart by war, but who are then often invisible when it comes to taking political decisions about the future of that society.”

The conflict in Syria is a contentious issue, with many voices around the world offering their view on how to resolve it. In the interregnum however little has been done to protect Syrian women or offer them a voice in easing the conflict.

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In the State of The Union address that President Obama gave this week several hot topics related to women’s rights were mentioned. Equal pay for equal work, women paying equal healthcare premiums to men etc. However one of the main issues surrounding women’s rights wasn’t addressed at all: abortion.

I’m not going to get into a whole is it right or is it wrong argument here, because I don’t think it’s pertinent a solid 40 years after the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade. However surrounding that argument is the issue of how the abortion regulations and restrictions in certain states are impacting the lives of the working poor.

The Guttmacher Institute in its 2014 State Policies in Brief revealed an upward trend in abortion restrictions over the past several years. Since 2011 alone 205 restrictions have been enacted, which make it harder for women to obtain the procedure when not in medical danger of losing their own lives.

In more than half of the 50 American states abortions cannot be legally obtained after the 24-26 week mark, when a fetus is considered viable outside the womb. Restrictions further than this are often not based on information accepted by the mainstream medical community, such as pushes to restrict abortions after the 20th week due to claims that the fetus can feel pain.  Some, such as the controversial piece of legislation that the Virginia state legislature tried to push in 2012 that would have forced women to have a transvaginal ultrasound before they could obtain an abortion, seek merely to stir the pot and and bring a case before the supreme court in the hopes that it will overturn Roe v. Wade.

While these restrictions certainly impact women they in no way compare to those put in place in certain states that, whether by design or not, are discriminatory along socio-economic lines.

A new de facto path to obliterating abortion has emerged in some states, where legislatures cinch clinical regulations so tight that no abortion providers can remain open under them. This November for example Louisiana enacted spacial regulations that none of its five providers met, forcing them to close down.

Another approach to the back-door banning of abortions has been to add a 24-hour wait period between when women receive counseling for abortions and when the procedure can be performed.

These two approaches impact women of lower socio-economic status to a much greater extent than women in the middle and upper-class. In an an article written about the restrictions in Louisiana, a former abortion provider remarked that such laws make it next to impossible for her poorer patients to obtain the procedure.

“If we make it any more difficult, where are the patients going to go—Houston? Atlanta? My patients can’t afford to go to Baton Rouge from New Orleans, much less to Houston or Atlanta. It’s going to force women to go back to what they used to do before, and women will die.”

While a wealthy woman working a white-collar job may be able to afford the hit of missing up to two days of work and traveling outside of the state, for those less fortunate its an economic impossibility. For these women the story can end in one of two ways: obtaining an illegal abortion, or giving birth to a child they for whatever reason are not prepared to have.

Roe v. Wade, for all of the controversy surrounding it, did not in fact cause an increase in abortion rates in the U.S. Before abortion was made legal approximately 1 million procedures were performed each year, and the annual average is still around 1 million 40 years later. All the decision did was legalize an unfortunately common practice, and make it safer for the women who obtained abortions.

Making abortions impossible to legally obtain will not stop those with resources of seeking them.  These restrictions do nothing but make it unreasonably harder for the working poor to obtain safe and legal abortions, which may unfortunately lead them to seek unsafe procedures.