I should be sorry for the highly controversial and click bait title. But I am not. There are some things in life that you can not just let go. This taunt is one of them.
Recently, Thomson Reuters published a report stating that they have found out the world's most dangerous countries for women. This was the eight iteration of their annual undertaking where they assess several metrics to reach a conclusion as to where countries stand. This year they have concluded that India is the most dangerous country for women. In the world. Even after Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
Yes, you read that right. Even a war torn country with a barely functioning Government is safer for women that India. I know for a fact that India has its share of problems. But Somalia and Syria being better than India in terms of women safety was a bit hard for me accept point blank.
Liberals in India picked it right up. This is as clickbaity as my own title here. The only difference is that they won't admit it as such. But more on that later.
At first glance, the fancy website does look promising. Except that it does not have a SSL certificate installed. So much for being called trust.org. Also, the news and the report itself claims that it is an experts' survey on the status of women all over the world. When you look deeper at their methodology, they spell it out quite clearly -
Even without getting the data dump, one thing is clear.
This is not a survey. You don't survey the status of anybody all over the world with only 548 participants. Worse, the participants are not evenly distributed across the entire spectrum of the population.
To give you a parallel to what Thomson has done - imagine a football team. The team has 11 players. Now imagine 10 such teams. You do a poll of each player and ask them questions about their favorite game. What result should you expect?
Even then, I am willing to wait it out and see if they respond at all with the data. Who were the exalted participants to judge entire countries across seven continents is something we don't know.
Recently, Thomson Reuters published a report stating that they have found out the world's most dangerous countries for women. This was the eight iteration of their annual undertaking where they assess several metrics to reach a conclusion as to where countries stand. This year they have concluded that India is the most dangerous country for women. In the world. Even after Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.
Yes, you read that right. Even a war torn country with a barely functioning Government is safer for women that India. I know for a fact that India has its share of problems. But Somalia and Syria being better than India in terms of women safety was a bit hard for me accept point blank.
Liberals in India picked it right up. This is as clickbaity as my own title here. The only difference is that they won't admit it as such. But more on that later.
At first glance, the fancy website does look promising. Except that it does not have a SSL certificate installed. So much for being called trust.org. Also, the news and the report itself claims that it is an experts' survey on the status of women all over the world. When you look deeper at their methodology, they spell it out quite clearly -
"We contacted 548 experts focused on women’s issues including aid and development professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, non-government organisation workers, journalists, and social commentators"So it is not exactly a poll of ordinary citizens about their perception of women's safety in the world. The entire exercise is restricted only to 548 experts (data points). Worse, the data itself is not publicly available and verifiable. They have given a mail address to request the data concerned (and I have requested for the same). But I won't be holding my breath till I get one.
Even without getting the data dump, one thing is clear.
This is not a survey. You don't survey the status of anybody all over the world with only 548 participants. Worse, the participants are not evenly distributed across the entire spectrum of the population.
To give you a parallel to what Thomson has done - imagine a football team. The team has 11 players. Now imagine 10 such teams. You do a poll of each player and ask them questions about their favorite game. What result should you expect?
Even then, I am willing to wait it out and see if they respond at all with the data. Who were the exalted participants to judge entire countries across seven continents is something we don't know.
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