Jehovah’s Witnesses

For Immediate Release
April 1, 1998

Women: What does the future hold for them?

FRANCE—Approximately three years ago, the United Nations published in its report The World’s Women 1995: “Too often, women and men live in different worlds, worlds that differ in access to education and work opportunities, and in health, personal security and leisure time.” Today, the situation is no different.

In April 1998, in some 230 lands around the world, a special newsmagazine will focus on the cocondition of women. Articles entitled “Discrimination Against Females,” “Appreciating Women and Their Work,” and “What Does the Future Hold for Women?” will discuss issues facing more than one half of the world’s population. Reports issued by the United Nations and excerpts from authors dealing with women’s issues, as well as summaries of interviews, will educate the reader about the harsh conditions under which many women live and ways in which these can be improved.

Tens of millions of people around the world will have access to a copy of the special issue in their native language. The magazine will offer practical, beneficial information to women on how they can improve their education, health, and hygiene. An educational program that can help women in dealing with oppression is to be highlighted. Photographs throughout the magazines beautifully illustrate the industriousness of women.

Many interesting facts will be brought out: In the Western world, women are often the victims of discrimination, violence, and sexual harassment. In Africa, thousands of girls and young women are sold into slavery. In Asia, hundreds of thousands of young girls are sold or forced into prostitution. Six hundred million women around the globe are illiterate, and more than 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people of the world who live in dire poverty are women. Although the work of hundreds of millions of women—cultivating crops, tending small family plots, or caring for livestock—feeds half the world, women “earn only one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one percent of the world’s property,” said the president of the World Bank. Despite their hard work—managing a household, earning money, growing food, rearing children—many women rarely get credit for what they do.

Preview copies of the articles will be made available to groups and organizations that are working in behalf of women. The information will prove to be invaluable to all those concerned about the issues facing women. The Watch Tower Society, the publisher of the magazine Awake!, prints educational material in some 350 languages. Awake! has a circulation of 19,617,000 and is printed in 81 languages.

Magazines will be available in Afrikaans, Arabic, Cebuano, Chinese, Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Iloko, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Ukrainian, Yoruba, and Zulu.

Call for possible copies in Albanian, Amharic, Chichewa, Cibemba, Ewe, Georgian, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hiligaynon, Hindi, Igbo, Kannada, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malagasy, Marathi, Myanmar, Nepali, New Guinea, Pidgin, Papiamento, Sepedi, Sesotho, Shona, Sinhalese, Tahitian, Telugu, Thai, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Twi, and Xhosa.

Contact: J. R. Brown, telephone: (718) 560-5600