Gender Equality

South Africa gained its third first lady on Monday when President Jacob Zuma married Tobeka Madiba, his fifth marriage and third concurrent spouse. With another fiancee in the wings and rumors about a possible future engagement, the country may have five or more first ladies before Zuma's presidency is over. Zuma's polygamy sits uneasily with the ruling party's commitment to gender equality and has been criticized by women's rights and AIDS activists. But despite the disquiet in some quarters, Monday's wedding passed without media controversy.

International Women's Day is today. How are you observing it, aside from perhaps noting the Google Doodle set up in its honor? Maybe you're signing an online petition seeking gender equality in medical research. Or tweeting using the hashtag "#womensday" to honor women's progress and to renew commitments to women's rights. If you're in Kabul, Afghanistan, you might be making a stop by that city's first Internet cafe just for women. International Women's Day is not nearly as well known in the United States as it is in other parts of the globe; elsewhere, it's marked by rallies, banners and even a day off. Many people in Armenia and Mongolia get time away from the job; in China, only women have that luxury.

Your article "Closing the Financial Literacy Gap" (May 9) really struck a nerve with me, as I'm sure it will with many other women. I attended top-flight private schools in New York and have a law degree, but, like so many other women, always have taken the position, at work or at home, that "it's not about money." So it is with a sinking feeling that I survey the financial documents of my female clients who are facing a divorce and, therefore, life on their own, with a fraction of the opportunities to become financially literate that I had. The causes of this phenomenon are many, but it shows that gender equality is still a long way off. JENNY SKOBLE Los Angeles

When public buses rumble to a stop in some of Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods, women often dutifully enter by the rear door and sit in the back, leaving the front for men. There's no law requiring the women to do so, but those who don't risk verbal taunts and intimidation. It's a curious sight given Israel's history as an international trailblazer for women's rights. The country produced one of the democratic world's first female heads of government with Golda Meir's election in 1969.

Re "A Thousand Proverbs Later, It's Still a Brutality," Commentary, April 20: Mineke Schipper, albeit good with proverbs, is unfortunately quite ignorant about domestic violence. After quoting old proverbs about women, she says "the threat of violence against women still looms large." But she neglects to mention that women initiate domestic violence about as often as men do. Cal State Long Beach maintains a bibliography that summarizes 150 scholarly investigations, with an aggregate sample size exceeding 100,000, consistently finding that "women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners."

The state appeals court in Santa Ana deserves three cheers for ruling that schools must set the bar at the same level for both cheerleaders and athletes. The 4th District Court of Appeal decided last week in favor of Melissa Fontes, now a 20-year-old college student in Oregon. When Fontes was a student at Woodbridge High School in Irvine, she was thrown off the cheerleading team for getting an F in a chemistry course. Her overall average was higher than the 2.

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. was sharply critical as a young Reagan administration lawyer of various efforts in the 1980s aimed at gender equality, calling them "highly objectionable" and probably unconstitutional. In several memos, he described as "pernicious" the notion that salaries for jobs held mostly by women should be raised to the comparable level of jobs that were held traditionally by men.

When public buses rumble to a stop in some of Jerusalem's religious neighborhoods, women often dutifully enter by the rear door and sit in the back, leaving the front for men. There's no law requiring the women to do so, but those who don't risk verbal taunts and intimidation. It's a curious sight given Israel's history as an international trailblazer for women's rights. The country produced one of the democratic world's first female heads of government with Golda Meir's election in 1969.

A single mother of three, survivor of prison torture and exile. A pediatrician, linguist and practiced buster of gender barriers as the first female president of Chile. This is the resume that makes Michelle Bachelet an excellent choice to lead the newly created United Nations agency to promote gender equality around the globe, to be called U.N. Women. With her appointment this week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has brought some badly needed star power to the world organization in general and to women's issues in particular.

Today we celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage, a victory that took more than 70 years of political struggle to achieve. After women won the right to vote in 1920, socialist feminist Crystal Eastman observed that suffrage was an important first step but that what women really wanted was freedom. In an essay titled "Now We Can Begin," she laid out a plan toward this goal that is still relevant today. Eastman outlined a four-point program: economic independence for women (including freedom to choose an occupation and equal pay)

Today we celebrate the anniversary of female suffrage, a victory that took more than 70 years of political struggle to achieve. After women won the right to vote in 1920, socialist feminist Crystal Eastman observed that suffrage was an important first step but that what women really wanted was freedom. In an essay titled "Now We Can Begin," she laid out a plan toward this goal that is still relevant today. Eastman outlined a four-point program: economic independence for women (including freedom to choose an occupation and equal pay)

Sex selection in parts of China and India will produce a 10% to 20% excess in males in the next 20 years, according to a new study. Many couples in China, India and South Korea prefer sons. This cultural pattern combined with the use of ultrasound technology for sex selection over the past two decades has produced the shift, said the authors of an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Assn . In nature, about 105 males are born to every 100 females.

A single mother of three, survivor of prison torture and exile. A pediatrician, linguist and practiced buster of gender barriers as the first female president of Chile. This is the resume that makes Michelle Bachelet an excellent choice to lead the newly created United Nations agency to promote gender equality around the globe, to be called U.N. Women. With her appointment this week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has brought some badly needed star power to the world organization in general and to women's issues in particular.

South Africa gained its third first lady on Monday when President Jacob Zuma married Tobeka Madiba, his fifth marriage and third concurrent spouse. With another fiancee in the wings and rumors about a possible future engagement, the country may have five or more first ladies before Zuma's presidency is over. Zuma's polygamy sits uneasily with the ruling party's commitment to gender equality and has been criticized by women's rights and AIDS activists. But despite the disquiet in some quarters, Monday's wedding passed without media controversy.

I don't think I've ever finished a Gail Collins-penned editorial in the New York Times, and now I know why. Collins, the paper's editorial page editor from 2001 to 2007 and now op-ed columnist, has elevated dull writing into a rhetoric all her own such that, in more than 400 pages of this wholesomely instructive tract on American feminism, she never turns a phrase, sallies a wit or takes a nibble from the peach of humor. "When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present" is written in the competent style of a textbook, and my weekend spent reading it felt exactly like homework.

Chinese officials painted a bright picture of gender equality in the country Tuesday, saying more women are entering the workforce, getting a basic education and moving into positions of power in government. However, women have yet to break into the highest echelon of the Communist Party, and other recent reports have offered a grimmer view of their daily lives.

Sex selection in parts of China and India will produce a 10% to 20% excess in males in the next 20 years, according to a new study. Many couples in China, India and South Korea prefer sons. This cultural pattern combined with the use of ultrasound technology for sex selection over the past two decades has produced the shift, said the authors of an analysis published Monday in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Assn . In nature, about 105 males are born to every 100 females.

Angela E.V. King, 68, a Jamaican diplomat who became a leading advocate for women's equality and the first special advisor to the U.N. secretary-general on women's advancement, died Monday of complications from breast cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, her former husband Wilton James said. During a 38-year career at the United Nations, King led efforts to end discrimination against women and promote gender equality. She was also one of a few women to lead a U.N.