"I have never felt more like a sex object in my life," she said. "I walk down the street and have men openly eyeing me, making inappropriate comments, and even grabbing. I have been proposed to at least a hundred times. I'm not kidding."

She went on to talk about how deft the men are at shirking shame and blaming the women for the men's own lustful thoughts, and how hard the wives in that polygamous society work to please their husbands for fear of getting divorced. As an Iraqi proudly told me just today, "We can marry four wives. If my wife didn't obey me, i would change her like i change my shoes."

In the U.S. we have been highly critical of the world's treatment of women, and rightly so. We've made great strides forward in the U.S. But if we were honest, we'd admit that we still have a long way to go.

When the gender equality movement gained momentum in the 1960s, women were told that they didn't have to grow up with the same domestic constraints as the previous generations. In her seminal book, The Feminine Mystique, written in 1963, Betty Friedan asked the same question many women were asking about their lives at the time, "Is this all?"

Out of the '60s, society started to realize women could be just as successful professionally as men. But the message was twisted into the idea that to be successful, women had to be as much like men as possible. To be successful in the workforce, women were expected to act like men, dress like men, be as tough as men, and talk like men. Not that men were necessarily the ones to blame. As Friedan wrote about the changing culture, "Men weren't really the enemy -- they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill."

Today, the message of the gender equality movement is still supposed to be that women can achieve what they choose. Yet that message is still being twisted.

Tragically, instead of young women today dreaming of developing the full potential of their minds, many are too focused on their bodies. Joan Jacobs Brumberg describes the intense pressures on young women today in her book, The Body Project. "Girls today grow up believing that good looks -- rather than good works -- are the highest form of female perfection." Brumberg asserts that today the body has become most girls' primary "project," creating a degree of self-consciousness that is often dangerous.

Caroline Knapp addresses body-loathing and the external self versus desire in her book, Appetites: Why Women Want. She writes about a friend, a professional woman who is quite successful in her career and family life. When she recently lost 10 pounds, she said, "You cannot believe how many people comment about the weight. Forget the book contract. Forget the achievements of motherhood. It's all, 'Wow, you've lost weight.' As if this were the supreme accomplishment of my life."

We are all victims of our society's intense scrutiny of women's bodies. Due to advertising, all of us are flooded each day with thousands of images of women's figures. Magazines, billboards, product packaging, movies, and television relentlessly remind us of what an airbrushed, make-upped, digitally-enhanced, surgically-enhanced woman should look like. Madison Avenue intentionally exploits women's self-consciousness, hoping that if a woman hates her stomach and hates her thighs enough, that she will buy their product.

Every digitally-enhanced model wears a look of desire that, as Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock puts it, "To men, the look says 'Screw me'; to women, it says, 'Screw you.'"

Women today are told they can have it all, the perfect body, the perfect career, the perfect home, the perfect family. They just need to work harder. But I don't believe a person can have it all. When faced with the demands of real life, pursuing perfection in so many arenas will drive a person insane.

"You've come a long way, Baby." And you've earned every step. One friend teased me about a sign she'd seen, "To receive half the credit of men, women have to do twice as good of a job. Luckily, this isn't difficult."

You certainly have come a long way. We as a society have come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. Equality in the workforce is still a struggle. And women are increasingly scrutinized for their body while facing increasing expectations of both their careers and their home lives.

Now more than ever we need to be quick to praise women for who they are. Young girls, now as much as ever, need parents who can remind them of their intrinsic value as a woman. Wives, now as much as ever, need husbands who are quick to recognize her character and her beauty. Mothers, now as much as ever, need children to praise her for the sacrifices she has made. Working women, now as much as ever, deserve respect for their accomplishments. Our society, now as much as ever, owes a debt of gratitude to the women that have brought us this far, and to the future generations of women that will continue to change the world for the better.