God(dess) forbid, we should consider ourselves more enlightened when it comes to women's rights...

Sunday's New York Times ran a wrenching front-page story on child brides in Africa -- girls as young as ten given, or rather sold, in marriage to men who are decades older (often as second wives). The main focus of the article is a story with a sort-of happy ending: 12-year-old Mwaka Simbeye, whom her father married off to a neighbor in his 70s to settle a debt of $16, eventually escaped and was taken back into her parents' home (partly because her father had heard that he might get arrested under a new policy cracking down on forced marriages of young girls). Others are not so lucky:

Uness Nyambi, of the village of Wiliro, said she was betrothed as a child so her parents could finance her brother's choice of a bride. Now about 17, she has two children, the oldest nearly 5, and a husband who guesses he is 70. "Just because of these two children, I can not leave him," she said.

Beatrice Kitamula, 19, was forced to marry her wealthy neighbor, now 63, five years ago because her father owed another man a cow. "I was the sacrifice," Ms. Kitamula said, holding back tears. She likened her husband's comfortable compound of red brick houses in Ngana village to a penitentiary. "When you are in prison," she said, "you have no rights."

The article notes that in Ethiopia, about a third of the girls are married by age 15. It concludes with another look at Mwaka and her family:

Mwaka's mother, Tighezge Simkonda, looks like an older version of her daughter and is no less shy. "I did object," she said softly, glancing nervously at her husband chatting nearby. "I said, 'My daughter is very young.' "

"But the control is with the man," she said. "The daughters belong to the man."

But, of course, it would be most deplorable if any American women were to read that and conclude that they're liberated while the women in those Third World countries are oppressed. After all, it would be "culturally insensitive" to suggest that the West is more enlightened when it comes to women's rights, and besides, it's important to understand that American women are really silenced in similar ways. Or so as a lot of women's studies professors would tell us.

There's also Dr. Edwin Nichols, a psychologist who has conducted "diversity" and "cultural awareness" workshops for numerous colleges, government agencies, and corporations, and who teaches in those workshops (among other things) that women in Africa are treated as equal to men.

Personally, I think the case for cultural imperialism has never been so clear.