10 Worst Countries for Women

Today March 8 is International Women's Day. In spite of real progress around the globe, the bedrock problems that have dogged women for centuries remain.

Putting power in women's hands is the biggest challenge for improving their lives in every country, advocates agree. Whether in the poorest countries of Africa, or the most repressive of the Middle East or Asia, lack of control over their own destinies blights women's lives from early childhood.

Here are 10 of the worst countries in the world to be a woman today:

Afghanistan
Democratic Republic of Congo
Iraq
Nepal
Sudan
Other countries in which women's lives are significantly worse than men's include Guatemala, where an impoverished female underclass faces domestic violence, rape and the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa. An epidemic of gruesome unsolved murders has left hundreds of women dead, some of their bodies left with hate messages.

read more digg story