What women want

GERMANY: I read Faiza S Khan’s piece ‘What women want’ (June 12) with great interest. However, I disagree with her views. In my opinion, the status of women improved considerably after World War II. The US TV serial, ‘Mad Men’ shows that women were usually just typists in offices during the 60s. Today, women have more important roles.

Few intelligent “culturalists” ever denied that there were biological differences between men and women — they merely stated that historically, these differences were exaggerated into various ideological dogmas underwritten by pure pseudoscience. And in the case of biological facts, differences were not exaggerated but they became the basis for dogmas in cultural and not biological terms. Women have to be given equal treatment and unlike what the writer would have us believe, I think they are getting there slowly.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 13th, 2010.