All that is good

PICTURE A COUNTRY in which women have no vote and in which few are employed outside the home. A country in which, through conviction or social pressure, most people attend religious gatherings once a week; in which the state religion and the law ban homosexuality; where there are powerful religious movements urging abstinence from alcohol; where it is normal for women over thirty to wear black, and where they only appear in public if their bodies are completely covered; in which married women have only recently acquired property rights; and in which there is a strong social stigma against divorce, illegitimacy, and any form of sexual activity outside marriage.

Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? Iran? No - this is a picture of Britain in 1900. (In modern Iran and Pakistan at least, many of the above are not true.)

Michael Axworthy

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