Last month, the Thompson Reuters Foundation conducted a survey which found, based on the beliefs of 548 “experts” in women’s issues, that the U.S. was the 10th most dangerous country in the world for women.
People with an ounce of commonsense recognized this was bogus, but media outlets eager to demonstrate that women in America really are oppressed victims of the patriarchy spread the news uncritically.
Thankfully, American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers has a new “Factual Feminist” video out this week that debunks the claims of this survey. For starters, she notes several other studies — not based on the radical views of those predisposed to see women as victims, but on actual data — that put the U.S. as one of the safest countries in the world when it comes to physical security and protection from rape (in many countries, rapists can avoid punishment by marrying their victims).
“Now, the threat of harm is a human constant, and there is a lot of room for improvement in the United States,” Hoff Sommers says in the video. “But by any reasonable measure, American women are among the safest, freest, healthiest, best educated, and opportunity rich women in the world. Why pretend otherwise?”
Yet the survey pretends that America is more dangerous than Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
When Hoff Sommers reached out to the Thompson Reuters Foundation asking for information about the experts and methodology it used for its survey, the organization responded by saying the data are based on “perceptions.”
Basically, feelings, not facts.
Watch: