10.As quoted in Ghosh (2006, p.310) on Sen’s (2005) The Argumentative Indian, “Again, unlike conventional history texts, ‘Women and Men’ is a highly innovative chapter, which rightly stresses the need for linking the ‘agency’ issues with gender bias in the current state of the developing world. The counter factual example of Japan is worth noting: ‘Japan has no particular gender bias in nutrition or health care or school education, but men do seem to have considerable relative advantage in securing high leadership positions in administration or business.’ The picture is no better for the United States even with standard contrary results from our subcontinent: ‘For example, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka all have—or have had—female heads of government, which the United States has not yet had (and does not, if I am any judge, seem very likely to have in the immediate future)’ (p. 234). The picture is no better even for Russia or China. He also does not forget to mention the misplaced definition of household work as ‘sedentary’ by WHO and FAO.” Also, as noted in Ghosh (2006, p.312), “Barring our assumed superiority of the Vedic age, why ‘dignity of chair, not dignity of labour’ rules supreme; in spite of great texts like Kamasutra and Anangaranga, which are unparalleled in time scale in any country, there is not even a single city which can guarantee the security of women irrespective of caste, creed, religion and political affiliation, and we do not have any clear policy on these issues thereby increasing the indulgence of perversion, where there is not a single geographical unit which can assure other animals a right to live under the laws of nature. Why is honesty penalized?” Sen (2005)himself notes that, “Some studies have suggested that there are as many as 1.5 million cases per year of rape and physical assault on women in the United States alone.”
