Sign at the Women’s March on Washington, January 21, 2017. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Most of the time debunking a misleading study or bad statistic requires marshaling better data. But in the case of this ridiculous survey released by the Thomas Reuters Foundation, it just takes common sense.

Reuters surveyed 546 so-called experts around the world to explore what countries are the most dangerous for women. They ranked the United States as tied for third worst (with Syria) “when respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex.” Reuters explains that survey respondents “included aid professionals, academics, healthcare staff, non-government organization workers, policy-makers, development specialists and social commentators,” and that those respondents cited the #MeToo movement as evidence of the U.S.’s problems with sexual harassment and violence.


No doubt, the United States has an ongoing problem with sexual harassment and needs to continue to fight against this problem. Yet widespread support for the #MeToo movement has shown that, unlike other countries around the globe, in the U.S., there is a consensus that such abuse of women (and men) in not acceptable, authorities need to hold perpetrators accountable, and it must be easier for victims to seek justice. Those facts alone demonstrate that the United States does not belong among the worst countries in the world in terms of its treatment of women. This basic respect for rule of law, women’s equality, and the great economic opportunity provided to women (and men) — and, yes, relative safety — is why the United States ranks 16th on the much more rationally constructed U.S. News‘ list of best countries for women.

Yet to argue against the Reuters classification on its merits is an absurdity. If any of those “experts” actually had to choose where their daughters must live among the United States, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen or Nigeria (all of which were ranked as better that the United States), no one doubts what the outcome would be.


And in fact, during the past month, the media has been covering the plight of people desperate to come with their children to the United States. If every single country in South America and Central America, and Mexico is really safer for women, why is no one seeking asylum there? Why are so many trying to enter this hellhole for women by any means necessary? In fact, if we are to take this research seriously, given the dangers for women in the U.S., wouldn’t the humane thing be for border agents to turn these women away — for their own safety? Is that what these experts recommend?

The only solid takeaway from this report is that the world’s experts are deeply out of touch and blinded by anti-Americanism, and so must be the media outlets that parrot this nonsense as serious research.