Women--America's "secret weapons".

• Author: Fein, Geoff S.
• Position: Washington Pulse - Brief Article

One answer to why the Islamic world hates America is the role of women in U.S. society, according to Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer and a New York Times best selling author.

"Women are America's secret weapons," he said in a presentation to the National Defense Industrial Association's armaments conference. Peters calls women "America's hyper-power." For the past 150 years, women fought their way into the educational system and the work force, he said.

"In the last past century, ... the greatest sociological revolution was the transition of women in the U.S., Canada and some other countries in Western Europe, from men's property," he said. That is not the case in the Middle East, Peters contends, where society is purely patriarchic. Middle Eastern women, by not being allowed to study and work, make almost no contribution to the economy, he said. Pakistan, for example, uses at must 20 percent of its human capital, because women are not in the work...