Joan Bakewell: For women around the world, life is getting worse

Iran's Chief prosecutor doesn't like Barbie. I don't like Barbie either. There we are at one. But that's about it. From there on we diverge so broadly on the subject of women there seems no point in talking of bridging the gulf. The gulf gapes so wide it seems there are not two sides but two worlds. And they are finding it increasingly difficult to inhabit the same planet.

Barbie is a good icon to choose. She represents all the girlie fantasies I dislike most – come-on exaggerated shape, pouty mouth, chunks of false hair and an ever- expanding wardrobe of cheap and nasty clothes which are forever jamming up the Hoover. Her male counterpart, Ken, is a caricature of macho man, grotesque of muscle and blank of intelligence. They were meant for each other and must surely have voted George Bush into the Presidency.

Iran wants to ban the import of such toys as likely to bring "destructive cultural and social consequences". This is a moot point. Barbie has been around since 1959 and civilisation hasn't fallen. A granddaughter who at one time had six of them humped them all into a bag and dragged them round with appropriate disdain. They were meant for her pleasure and when they failed, they were out.

That seems about right. The fact is, Barbie offered no narrative for play. Baby-dolls have traditionally been the way little girls learned to care for babies, wrapping them in shawls, changing nappies, feeding and caring, learning tenderness along the way.

Barbie doesn't provoke tenderness. She provokes aspirations to spurious glamour... no role model for our times, but no more than much current trash.

Iran, however, sees her as a serious threat. She is, for them, emblematic of all that has gone wrong with womanhood in the west. And they are doing terrible things about it. The hideous treatment of women under the Taliban in Afghanistan is now spilling over into Iran and Iraq. Oppression, abuse, violence and degradation are on the increase. It is one of the most catastrophic outcomes of the war in Iraq that women there are now being driven back to ancient and punitive ways of life.

It wasn't always so. Iraq's 1970 constitution guaranteed women equal rights to education, the ownership of property and the vote. After the first Gulf War, impoverished families stopped educating their girls. By 1987, 75 per cent of women were illiterate. Post Saddam, with the rise of religious groups and tribal leaders, things have got worse. Since 1991, 4000 women have been the victims of honour killings. The law offers mitigation if honour is the reason for the murder.

Only last week, a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was murdered by her father because she had an innocent friendship with a British soldier with whom she was delivering relief aid. Her father was arrested and released two months later. His wife, Leila, left him and is now on the run from his vengeance. This is history running backwards, and we seem helpless to stop it.

In the Kurdish north – a semi-autonomous region where the economy flourishes and which the west sees as a liberal haven – there is a surge in the numbers of women burning themselves to death. Since the fall of Saddam, there have been hundreds of such deaths. The human rights minister there admits it is a problem. Women's activists say that a woman a day is now trying to kill herself in Kurdistan. But why is it happening?

When such places return to what's called "normal", they may seem peaceful and settled to outsiders comparing them to the wretched south. But in fact these communities are returning to feudal ways of living where women are the voiceless victims. Moreover, when a people are ravaged by war and invasion, the damaged pride and powerlessness of their men can turn into rage and violence against those they perceive as weak.

It is the law of the pecking order. Whoever is abused and humiliated takes it out on those over whom they still have power. Within families where the culture is one of male machismo, it is simply easy to beat up on the women.

We all know it is happening, we know it is wrong, and we are unable to stop it. This is a distressing insult to our belief that with enough protest, enough global representation, enough logical argument... something will change. We persist in our conviction that we can change things for the better. A philosopher theologian once told me we can never be certain whether or not we have free will, but we must live as though we believed in it. Today we must live in the belief that we can change the world for the better. But can we? I sometimes wonder. I hope you remembered to vote yesterday.

joan.bakewell@virgin.net

More from Joan Bakewell