All sorts of links to the Lancet story about the invasion of Iraq leading to 100,000 excess deaths. Well, I could quibble up one side of the street and down the other, though my heart really isn't in that (one excess death is bad enough). However, there is one very serious problem with the story - and with all the blogging on it: the incessant repetition of this quote,
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children"
What if I were to say, for example, "most individuals killed were men and women"? This would be just as true as the above line - but you'd rightly regard it as meaningless because it appears to include everybody. Or how about "most individuals killed were men and children"? Not quite the same emotional resonance as "women and children" is there?
The problem here is that the group "children" is sufficiently large that including it with "women" (or "men") automatically yanks the sample over 60% no matter where you are. For example, in Iraq, 40% of people are under 15, which means that "women" are another 30% - and so we begin with a population sample of 70%. In such a case, it would be very difficult for "most" of the excess deaths to come from men dying before their time.
The "women and children" thing is so common that people have clearly never quite thought through the implications. It is meant to be gender sensitive, but is in fact profoundly lazy. Seeing the world through a "gender lens" (as we say in the humanitarian world) means looking at the roles played in society by both women and men (and, yes, children) and developing responses that take all roles into account.
Posted by Martial