Read The World Split Open for Free Online Page A

perceived support of Clinton.
    1999  The UN reports that women and children still constitute the overwhelming majority of the world’s poor and that women are two-thirds of the world’s illiterate.
    The newest users of the Internet are middle-aged women.
    The U.S. women’s soccer team battles an evenly matched Chinese team and wins the World Cup trophy by one point in overtime penalty kicks. The nation is suddenly mesmerized by women’s soccer.
    Boys Don’t Cry
, a film about a teenager, born a girl, who lives as a young man, with lethal consequences, introduces Americans to a growing transgender civil rights movement.
    2000  The Beijing Plus Five meetings at the United Nations assess the progress that each nation has made in implementing the 1995
Platform for Action.
Activists successfully defend against a well-organized backlash launched by various nations andorthodox religions. Evidence of a global backlash is clearly present.
    Violence against clinics that provide abortions continues unabated.
    Bangladesh reports that in one year there have been 177 cases of men throwing sulfuric acid in women’s faces to express their feelings of anger or rejection. Only a handful of men are jailed. Some women’s rights advocates regard it as violation of women’s human rights. Others think their society has become too permissive and advocate the return of veiled faces. Twenty-two million single, divorced, and widowed women, who mostly voted for Democrats due to their relative economic insecurity, do not vote. George W. Bush becomes president.
    New Yorkers elect Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. Senator.
    The Federal Drug Administration approves mifepristone (RU-486) for use in medical abortions, twelve years after its first use in France. At the same time, the number of abortion providers shrinks to a historical low.
    On Mother’s Day, a “Million Mom March” gathers in Washington, D.C., and in other cities, to end gun violence.
    A UNICEF study reports that half of the world’s female population has experienced violence or abuse during their lifetimes, and describes it as a “global epidemic.”
    During a Puerto Rican day parade in New York City, young men grope, strip, and molest at least fifty female bystanders.
    2001   President Bush reinstates the Reagan-era global gag rule that prevents any international agency from receiving U.S. funds if it mentions or provides abortions; strips contraceptive coverage from federal employees (which Congress restores); prevents taxpayer funding for additional stem-cell research; and closes the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach.
    For the first time in world history, an international criminal court successfully indicts three Bosnian soldiers for the war crime of raping women during wartime.
    Barbara Ehrenreich’s
Nickel and Dimed
exposes the poverty of low-wage female workers and remains on the best-seller list for the next five years.
    A class-action sex discrimination suit,
Duke v. Wal-Mart Stores
, isfiled in the ninth U.S. District Court and eventually represents 1.6 million former and current female Wal-Mart workers.
    Terrorists fly planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. President Bush declares a “war on terror,” and invades and overthrows the Taliban government in Afghanistan, citing the Taliban’s brutal treatment of women as one justification. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) casts the only vote against giving the president authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against suspected terrorists.
    2002   The Bush administration withholds $34 million appropriated by Congress to the U.N. Population Fund for birth control, arguing (incorrectly) that the money will be used for “coercive abortions.” The U.N. agency estimates that this withdrawl will result in 800,000 more abortions and 2 million more unwanted