Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Some Women's Issues: Links For A Gray Wednesday

I've been working on a post that I'm not sure if I'll publish in its current form, so it's sitting in draft form now, lying fallow in my Posts list. I'm just not sure if it really makes clear the point I want to get across.


So, instead, a few links for you.


Shu Flies writes about depression and living abroad in a two-parter (you can click to Part II from Part I). While mood disorders affect both genders, and yes I know I shouldn't  take Wikipedia at face value (but I wanted to check my knowledge somewhere), women are "twice as likely" to develop them. This makes it a topic worth discussing not only in the larger sense of being an expat, but in the more specific sense of being a female expat. I've discussed postpartum depression here, and discussed how people I've known with depression - or who I felt likely suffered from depression -fared in Taiwan, but I personally can't write about it, because I don't have it. This limits how much and how knowledgeably I can cover the topic as it regards women's issues. It's good to see something out there for the Great Internet Readership from someone who is dealing with it.


Lee Teng-hui is expected to publish a statement endorsing the DPP in the upcoming presidential election. Interestingly, one of his aides said that Lee feels "Taiwan needs a head of state who is competent, strong, responsible, approachable and harbors compassion for the people, and that these traits are especially obvious in Taiwanese women".

China apparently has the highest ratio of C-sections in the world, according to a Slate article. Not Taiwan, but regionally something worth noting. I don't know the C-section statistics in Taiwan, though I would be interested in finding out (I know, I can be a terrible researcher sometimes). I don't know many women in Taiwan who have had C-sections, but that doesn't mean the ratio isn't high. 

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