Gender imbalance in Iraq

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http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/1 ... Widow.html

Iraq has close to a million widows.

This might be one advantage of Islam's polygamy standard--in times of war, when lots and lots of men are killed, at least the widows would have a chance at remarriage, even if they are a third or fourth wife. For the man, taking in a widow would represent an act of charity. Still, it looks like a widow with a large number of children might not find a husband.

For you single Christian guys: I'm sure that a lot of the widows are Christian.

My computer cant follow the link, but I found a similiar (or the same) article in the NY TImes going on line.


The article says about 10 thousand men died in the initial US invasion. And it says that another ten thousand have died in all the years of terrorism and civil strife since then ( it seems like it oughtta be more than that - but even if its 100 thousand- it doesnt change my point). And then over 20 years ago they had that bloody war with Iran which cost several tens of thousands of lives. But even all that falls far short of adding up to a million widows.


Something needs to be explained.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 26 Nov 2011, 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As with most claims involving religion, the statistics are either grossly exaggerated or they are outright lies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/world ... mer&st=cse

http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-20.pdf


The percentage of woman widowed in the US 15 years old+, was 10.5%, in the US, per 2000 census, as compared to the 9 percent figure from Iraq. The close to million report from Iraq was the total number reported by the government there, that were widowed, by all causes.

In the linked article it estimated Tens of thousands of deaths as a result of the Iran war in the 80's and 103K to 113K deaths from the conflicts starting with the first US invasions to secretarian violence after the war with the US.

Considering that all the men were probably not married, this probably accounts for somewhere under 150K of the widows in Iraq. The other 750K to 850K due to other causes, would bring the percentage down to close to 8 percent instead of 9 percent, if it were not for the wars.

The reason the percentage is higher in the US is probably because the life expectancy of women in the US is about 8 years longer than women in Iraq, and the disparity in life expectancy between women and men is less in Iraq at about 3 years compared to 5 years, per info. from Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Not really sure what the point of throwing in the total number and percentage of widows from Iraq was in the article. It just made it confusing. The issue is the relatively high percentage of younger widows, caused by the war; I don't see where the total percentage is relevant to the point the article was trying to get across, particulary, since that total percentage of 9 percent is lower than the US.

In this case the number of deaths 103K to 113K, during the conflicts with the US, and secretarian violence was provided by the Iraq Body Count organization IBC,a non profit organization. The numbers are conservative ones based only on documented deaths, so if anything they are an underestimate of the actual number of deaths in Iraq, and have nothing to do with religion.

The total number of widows in Iraq 900K or 1M where provided by two agencies within the government of Iraq.

The New York Times article made what appears to be a grammatical error below as bolded that other groups also have estimated the number of women widowed during the 9 year war. They should have said other groups have instead of other groups also have. What appears to be a grammatical error makes it sound like the 900K and 1M estimate, was an estimate of women widowed during the war, but it was actually the total number of widows estimated in Iraq by two government agencies in that country.

The Ministry of Social affairs from Iraq reports they pay 86,000 women widow benefits, of which they say the majority of women lost their husbands in the latest war. This is the only actual estimate of widows related to the war that the Iraq government presents in the article.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/world/middleeast/iraqi-widows-numbers-have-grown-but-aid-lags.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=andrew%20e%20kramer&st=cse

.

Thanks for clearing that up.

The statistics on widows is interesting, in the fact that the government only pays widows benefits to 86,000 widows; this seems to completely refute some of the organizations that were reporting up to 1.2 million people died in the Iraq war with the US.

No doubt the numbers are higher than documented cases, and it is likely that one would not receive government benefits unless the death was documented, but an error of 10,000 this way or that way certainly doesn't equal hundreds of thousands of deaths, more in the war.

I appreciate the article; I never thought about checking statistics on widows benefits in the country to validate the different estimations of deaths that occurred in the Iraq war. Lost some trust in the US government because of that war, and wasn't really sure who to believe when it came to estimations of deaths in the war.

I guess thoughthere is the caveat. that the US helped build the country back in Iraq, and could have influenced the government statistics on widows, and the amount of aid given to widows, but I'm hoping there is a positive influence in that respect rather than a negative one.