Irish women can count their blessings that they don’t live in Saudi Arabia or Mali, but this country

Published: Monday, October 03, 2011

There are days when, despite everything, Ireland still feels like quite a good place to live.

Days when the sun shines, days when you remember not to turn on the radio or open the economics pages.

Days when you watch an All-Ireland final, or take a walk by the sea, or hang out with family and friends and remember that spending time with people over Skype is not really the same.

Days when you stick your key into the ignition of the car, and remember that if you did that in Saudi Arabia, you'd be breaking the law, simply because you're a woman.

On such counting-your-blessings kind of days, it's best to avoid surveys like the one published recently by Newsweek and the Daily Beast. It ranked the world's best and worst places in which to be a woman, scoring 165 countries in terms of women's access to justice, health, their educational status, economic parity between the genders, and politics.

Click here to read the full article by Jennifer O'Connell.....