Benazir Bhutto later assumed a similar prominent role of leadership in the neighboring rival Muslim state of Pakistan. But these achievements came despite the fact that in a "study in rural Punjab revealed that between the ages of one and 23 months, female mortality rates are nearly twice those of males. Girls born to mothers who already have one or more surviving daughters experience 53% higher mortality...although both sexes receive the same number of calories, girls are given more cereals, while boys receive more highly valued milk and fat" (Lane 1995). Dowry murder is still practiced in many regions of India, where women are murdered for their dowries, and as "female literacy in Pakistan improves about 5% per decade, at which rate it will take 60 years to raise the literacy rate of teenage...
Chile recently elected the doctor and single mother Michele Bachelet to the position of president. Bachelet said in her inaugural address: "Who would have said, 10, 15 years ago, that a woman would be elected president?" (Liberia and Chile elect female leaders," 2006, Spiegel International). Yet in Latin America as well as in Africa 40% of adolescent childbearing takes place before the age of 18 and female earning power lags behind that of males in the same occupations (Lane 1995).
Bachelet was not the only woman recently elected to prominence in the developing world. On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took the oath of office as Africa's first elected female
