The best and worst countries to be a woman
A look at the Women, Peace, and Security Index shows how these countries might surprise you—and why it’s strategic to care.
She was on the run and escaped to New York, where she’s seeking asylum from what she describes as “death threats, rape threats, acid attack threats, mob-violence threats” stemming from her activism back home with women in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
One of the women weighs heavily on her mind. “She had a small piece of paper with 25 straight lines on it,” Ismail recalls, etched to mark each time security forces came to her home and sexually harassed her. “She said she was an uneducated woman,” but despite her illiteracy, she was creating a record of her abuse.
“That,” says Ismail, “is data.”
The ability to track information, to collect it, to have data readily available—whether scribbled on scrap paper or mined from
