On Wednesday, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released the latest installment of the “Factual Feminist” featuring Christina Hoffman Sommers. The topic of the video is a recent survey conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in which the United States is listed as the 10th most dangerous country for women.
Following her introduction, Sommers notes that the Thomson Reuters survey was “based on responses from 548 experts on women’s issues who were asked to list the world’s most dangerous countries for women.”
Categories of danger include: “Lack of access to health care, vulnerability to human trafficking, discrimination, sexual violence, [and] backwards customs.”
The survey places India atop the list of “most dangerous countries for women,” while the United States lands at number ten. In the category of “sexual violence,” the United States is ranked third.
Sommers scoffs at these findings, as well as the fact that numerous media outlets reported them uncritically. While the U.S. isn’t perfect, Sommers notes that “women across the globe are plagued by acid attacks, child marriage, forced veilings, stonings, female infanticide, female genital mutilation (FGM).” These things are essentially non-existent in America.
Instead of feelings, Sommers cites actual data. The World Policy Analysis Center shows that multiple countries, including Libya, Angola, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, and the Philippines allow men to “escape punishment” for rape by “marrying their victims.”
Sommers proceeds to cite even more data showing that while the U.S. can always improve, “by any reasonable measure, American women are among the safest, freest, healthiest, best educated, and opportunity-rich women in the world.”
“Why pretend otherwise?” she asks.
Sommers also questions the reasoning behind Thomson Reuters giving their alleged experts complete anonymity.
She concludes by claiming that the “survey is a travesty that lacks transparency and credibility, and it conveys misinformation which only encourages cynicism about journalism and fuels charges of fake news.”
The Daily Wire had the opportunity to speak with Christina Hoff Sommers about this survey. The following is our exchange:
DW: Why do you think Thomson Reuters would want to hide their methodology, and provide anonymity to the individuals they surveyed?
SOMMERS: I have no idea. The methodology is completely baffling. If you look at the fine print, they say something like: “We had a team of international experts and data scientists who helped us craft this survey.” It’s hard to believe that one of the experts didn’t tell Thomson Reuters that the survey has no value.
Why they did the study is a mystery, but I think that they just hoped people wouldn’t focus on details about methods – and, you know, they were right. Most journalists didn’t. I stopped counting the number of news organizations that published the findings as if they were based on serious research.
CBS, CNN, Fortune – they reported on the survey uncritically. All over Twitter, people linked to the stories and shared their outrage on how “The U.S. is one of the top ten most dangerous countries for women.” That is patently ridiculous. Yet so many seemed to take it seriously. There has always been a small group of activists who believe American women are living in a state of siege – a nightmarish “Handmaid’s Tale.” That group seems to be growing.
DW: What could possibly be the reason Thomson Reuters would release a survey that’s so obviously ridiculous?
SOMMERS: Well, rank ordering countries, if it’s done well, can be useful. That’s why the State Department, the World Health Organization, and various human rights groups do it – because it’s a useful tool for developing policies, directing resources, and encouraging countries to do better. But their methods are transparent, and you can review them and criticize them. That’s not the case with the Thomson Reuters survey.
You would think if you designed a survey to tell you something significant about women’s safety around the world, you would realize something was amiss when it ranks the U.S. as one of the worst places on earth. Such a paradoxical finding should have sent them back to the drawing board, but it didn’t. They ran with the finding.
The CEO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, Monique Villa, appeared on Indian television, and kept insisting that her perception poll was a critical complement to statistics. She said it provides a “snapshot” of the opinions of the world’s leading experts on women. I would say it provides a snapshot of experts totally out of touch with reality.
DW: What is the danger of releasing a survey like this – one that favors opinion over data, but presents itself as data-driven?
SOMMERS: There’s so much wrong with it. First of all, it gives people a distorted picture of reality. Secondly, it adds to cynicism about social science research. It also fuels the idea that the media promotes “fake news.” Finally, women around the world at risk for violence deserve better than this. They need solid research, not dysfunctional polls.
DW: Do think focusing on perception over reality is becoming a trend in mass-released public surveys?
SOMMERS: I have seen a lot of biased research from advocacy groups like the American Association of University Women. It has a long history of producing dubious studies that always supports the narrative of short-changed women and girls. The AAUW manufactured an alleged “self-esteem crisis” among girls in the 1990s. They also produced a study that made it seem like American girls were the have-nots in our schools. The exact opposite was true. It’s boys, not girls, who are on the wrong side of the education gender gap in the United States. But the media went along with the AAUW.
There is a lot of bogus research about women out there. Gender scholars don’t face the same sort of critical review as other researchers. Much of what we think we know about women and education – the pay gap, the alleged “rape culture” – is based on politically driven advocacy research. So when I saw this Thomson Reuters study – I worried that it was part of that effort.
DW: How can a survey like this cause harm, either in terms of political policy in the United States or in terms of social perception?
SOMMERS: It lends support to conspiracy theories about the patriarchy – you don’t typically see such studies coming from mainstream organizations like Thomson Reuters. Such research comes from activist gender scholars or women’s groups. But here is a respected media organization suggesting the United States is a failed state where women are concerned – worse than Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.
It’s not to say there aren’t areas in which we fail, but overall, American women are among the safest and most free women in the world.
Some people are going to believe the survey, and that’s worrisome; others are going to know it’s absurd, and that’s not good either. Reuters has a good name in journalism. Readers trust it. Next to every byline, there’s a link to its corporate “trust principles.” These obligate all Reuters employees to act with integrity and free of bias. How do those principles square with this disingenuous survey?
The Daily Wire would like to thank Christina Hoff Sommers for taking the time to speak with us.