Saving the World ~ Women: The Twenty First Century's Factor for Change by Paola Diana

From Goodreads

A passionate call for international gender equality by a leading entrepreneur; this smart, accessible and inspiring book makes the case for why all nations need more women at the top of politics and economics. `The status of women is a global challenge; it touches every human being without exception. How is it possible that countries where women have achieved political, economic and social rights after exhausting struggles remain seemingly indifferent to the egregiousness of other nations where the status of women is still tragic? The time has come to help those left behind.'

Blog tour

My thanks to Bei Guo of Midas PR team for the opportunity to take part in the blog tour of this book.  I have received a copy of the book in exchange for taking part.

Extract from the book

Below is the extract content that I have been given to share as my stop on the blog tour.  I hope this intrigues you and makes you want to read more.

I was born into a traditional Italian family where the father took all the decisions and held the purse strings. I was deemed good when I agreed with him and bad if I had different ideas. My brother, the male offspring, was always right; he would in time inherit the family’s assets and perpetuate our father’s surname. Mine was a northern family, from Padua, but I could have been born in any other city: the dominant culture in the seventies was the same everywhere. Had I been born in the south, I would have enjoyed even less freedom. 

I began to be a feminist as a child, when certain instincts I must have been born with started to develop. When I say ‘feminist’, I mean a person who abhors the injustice and discrimination so often directed at women and who fights on their behalf for equal rights and opportunities in a world where women are oppressed by men. Wearing a different label, I would have championed men’s rights if I had seen men being discriminated against in the same way by women. I myself endured the sort of routine psychological, and even physical, violence which was taken for granted within a ‘normal’ family when I was growing up; if you had a strong character and thought your own thoughts, as a girl you had no means of self-expression, you had to lower your eyes and submit. When I was small I silently rebelled but as I got older I started to speak out, determined to raise my voice to help myself and speak for the millions of other women who endure violence of all kinds on a daily basis.

Thanks to my classical studies and my degree course in political science, I was able to gain an insight into the contemporary world by exploring the historical and cultural heritage that underpins it. In studying the influence of church and state on patterns of human behaviour, I became increasingly convinced that from the earliest times the worst injustice to have afflicted our society is the maltreatment and repression of women: girls, mothers and widows. Across the Western world, there have for centuries, through periods of progress and change like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, been redoubtable feminists who have dedicated their lives to the cause of women’s emancipation and thereby brought about reform. However, there are billions of women who are still innocent victims of a violent and victimising male culture. We cannot abandon them to their fate. 

This call to arms is not only to emancipated women everywhere but to all men of conscience too, because we are all responsible. Governments should adopt policies specifically designed to promote respect for women’s rights worldwide. A new diplomacy is required; the achievement of justice will only be possible through the joint action of governments and international organisations. Women are the main drivers of change in this century; the fate of the world depends on their liberation and emancipation. A fairer and less confrontational society is possible if women are given a voice; if they are invested with the authority to change policies and alter the very way in which the power currently residing in obsolete male paradigms is exercised.

The concerted pressure of a critical mass of educated and economically independent women – women who have reached top positions in economics, science, finance and politics – brought to bear at this time of technological revolution will be crucial in creating a better world; the sort of world we want our children to live in and one where men will live more fulfillingly as well. Nothing is impossible; we just need to have a vision of the future we want to achieve and to want it enough to make it a reality. Each one of us can make a difference in some small way by working towards it with determination and sheer strength of purpose. For millennia the patriarchal system has been based on unfounded myths. When it collapses under the weight of education and scientific knowledge, a new era will dawn: the era of women; the era of empathy, compassion, knowledge and peace; an era in which the brain and soul will count for more than brute strength. 

London, 21 November 2017.