Various recent news about women

Harvard President Larry Summers made some remarks earlier this month to the effect that women were innately not as good as men at math and science, which set off a barrage of criticism. Deservedly so, for science doesn't back him up on this one, and the number of tenured professors at Harvard who are women has declined while he's been in office.

"It's just hard to avoid the conclusion that things have gotten worse in the last few years, and there's a climate of suspicion that we're going to appoint unqualified women, rather than a wholehearted search for the outstanding ones that are out there," said government and sociology professor Theda Skocpol. "Every time Summers talks about this issue he manages to share his worries that we might appoint unqualified women."

Others, however, say Harvard's administration has been lackluster on this issue for far longer than Summers' tenure.

The ongoing violence in the runup to the Iraqi election has dire implications for everyone, but are women bearing the brunt of the turmoil? Seems like it, according to women's rights activist Zainab Salbi:

The violence, Salbi says, has consequences far beyond the personal tragedies. It has driven many of Iraq's most prominent and talented women into their homes and out of public life, just when their participation in reconstructing the country is so crucial...

"I call it Code Orange in Iraq right now,'' said Salbi, president of Women for Women International, the D.C.-based organization she founded 10 years ago. "Women are barometers for how a society is going. Bad things in a society always start with women, and good things, too.''

She cites the Taliban as an example. When women were being persecuted, few paid any attention.

"People saw it as something that just impacted women,'' she said. "So we left it alone.''

But eventually the violence spread, turning Afghanistan into a toxic culture that bred a brand of terrorism that landed on our own doorstep. "In hindsight, you can see how it all started with women. I see it in all these places, a pattern that starts with women and spreads. Women are the softest door. The kitchen door. Nobody pays attention when it's opened.''

There's some hope.

Even those opposed to the prolonged presence of American forces say they have more freedom now. Karima Hashim Muhammad, an artist in her 40s, said she has "more personal freedom than before in spite of the (U.S.) occupation, which sooner or later will depart."

She said that when Saddam was in power she was afraid to exhibit work that the government might disapprove of. "I had a feeling that I was under observation."

Now teaching at an arts institute, she said she admires her fellow women candidates and believes many of them share the same goals -- even those representing the country's Islamic-based parties.

"We develop a kind understanding and admiration for each other," Muhammad said. "The difference between us is only that they are veiled and I am not."

Meanwhile, over at Guantanamo, women interrogators used sexual tactics to try to break their captives' wills.

Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

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Suspected Sept. 11 hijacker Hani Hanjour received pilot instruction for three months in 1996 and in December 1997 at a flight school in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"His female interrogator decided that she needed to turn up the heat," Saar writes, saying she repeatedly asked the detainee who had sent him to Arizona, telling him he could "cooperate" or "have no hope whatsoever of ever leaving this place or talking to a lawyer."'

The man closed his eyes and began to pray, Saar writes.

The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar adds, describing how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection.

The detainee looked up and spat in her face, the manuscript recounts.

The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean.

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft, stamped "Secret."

The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.

Why does it feel like we're going BACKWARDS?!?!