The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,251

women are better represented in government and the professions, and in which they earn a larger proportion of earned income, are less likely to have women at the receiving end of spousal abuse. Also, cultures that are classified as more individualistic, where people feel they are individuals with the right to pursue their own goals, have relatively less domestic violence against women than the cultures classified as collectivist, where people feel they are part of a community whose interests take precedence over their own.94 These correlations don’t prove causation, but they are consistent with the suggestion that the decline of violence against women in the West has been pushed along by a humanist mindset that elevates the rights of individual people over the traditions of the community, and that increasingly embraces the vantage point of women.

Though elsewhere I have been chary about making predictions, I think it’s extremely likely that in the coming decades violence against women will decrease throughout the world. The pressure will come both from the top down and from the bottom up. At the top, a consensus has formed within the international community that violence against women is the most pressing human rights problem remaining in the world.95 There have been symbolic measures such as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25) and numerous proclamations from bully pulpits such as the United Nations and its member governments. Though the measures are toothless, the history of denunciations of slavery, whaling, piracy, privateering, chemical weaponry, apartheid, and atmospheric nuclear testing shows that international shaming campaigns can make a difference over the long run.96 As the head of the UN Development Fund for Women has noted, “There are now more national plans, policies, and laws in place than ever before, and momentum is also growing in the intergovernmental arena.”97

Among the grassroots, attitudes all over the world will almost certainly ensure that women will gain greater economic and political representation in the coming years. A 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project of twenty-two countries found that in most of them, at least 90 percent of the respondents of both sexes believe that women should have equal rights, including the United States, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Lebanon, and countries in Europe and Latin America. Even in Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Kenya, more than 60 percent favor equal rights; only in Nigeria does the proportion fall just short of half.98 Support for women being allowed to work outside the home is even higher. And recall the global Gallup survey that showed that even in Islamic countries a majority of women believe that women should be able to vote as they please, work at any job, and serve in government, and that in most of the countries, a majority of the men agreed.99 As this pent-up demand is released, the interests of women are bound to be given greater consideration in their countries’ policies and norms. The argument that women should not be assaulted by the men in their lives is irrefutable, and as Victor Hugo noted, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

CHILDREN’S RIGHTS AND THE DECLINE OF INFANTICIDE, SPANKING, CHILD ABUSE, AND BULLYING

What do Moses, Ishmael, Romulus and Remus, Oedipus, Cyrus the Great, Sargon, Gilgamesh, and Hou Chi (a founder of the Chou Dynasty) have in common? They were all exposed as infants—abandoned by their parents and left to the elements.100 The image of a helpless baby dying alone of cold, hunger, and predation is a potent tug on the heartstrings, so it is not surprising that a rise from infant exposure to dynastic greatness found its way into the mythologies of Jewish, Muslim, Roman, Greek, Persian, Akkadian, Sumerian, and Chinese civilizations. But the ubiquity of the exposure archetype is not just a lesson in what makes for a good story arc. It is also a lesson on how common infanticide was in human history. From time immemorial, parents have abandoned, smothered, strangled, beaten, drowned, or poisoned many of their newborns.101

A survey of cultures by the anthropologist Laila Williamson reveals that infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by every kind of society, from nonstate bands and villages (77 percent of which have an accepted custom of infanticide) to advanced civilizations.102 Until recently, between 10 and 15 percent of all babies were killed shortly after they were born, and in some societies the rate has been as high as 50 percent.103 In the