I think it's important to note that women's issues in different cultures are often very different, and if you start diagnosing one culture's issues with the yar

I think it's important to note that women's issues in different cultures are often very different, and if you start diagnosing one culture's issues with the yardstick of another, you will cause a lot of false positives and negatives. For instance, India, where the author comes for, is often celebrated for having had a 1) female prime minister all the way back in the 60s 2) a female president 10 years ago, and lots of women in the three pillars of democracy. Compared to the US, that makes India look like a bastion of women's rights. But anyone who's lived there will obviously tell you that women there have their own set of problems. And in fact, when it comes to the president and the prime minister too, some would argue that they were instated as 'puppets' (Google for "Indira Gandhi dumb doll"). It's a different matter that she towered above all that and developed an identity of her own.