This is why Broadsheet is still a wrong, wrong idea. It makes me sad, sick and discouraged to see two articles about horrendous human suffering sandwiched around one about vapid celebs. Don't you see why "The World's Worst Place to Be A Woman" belongs as NEWS, not as a Broadsheet tidbit? Sorry, but however serious the content, "tidbits" is the presentation, and that perpetuates the impression of second-class news. Segregated from the MAJOR stuff.

The rest of Salon's redesign goes newspaper-red/white/& /blue, but dying women get pink-slipped beside TOM AND KATIE? Just stop it. Please.

These global horrors should matter to everybody, and lots of readers are going to skip over something presented under a Cosmo-girl-with-what-looks-like-a-coy-trail-of-cigarette-smoke sort of retro banner. Retro...is retrograde. Broadsheet does not help us all advance or take on such horrors together.

Laura Wallace

What can you say about a community that can generate at least 36 pages of letters about "kids in cafes" but can't even come up with TWO letters to address the literal enslavement of women who could easily be any one of us but for an accident of birth.

All of you who were so wound up about the kids/cafes "issue" - do you have no thoughts at all on this woman? Just don't care? Not your problem?

I'm sure that she would be comforted, at least, knowing that those who are fortunate enough to live in a country full of cafes are busy debating the relative merits of bringing your kids along vs leaving them with a sitter.

I guess this is a perfect illustration of the priorities of Broadsheet readers. I agree that this kind of article doesn't belong in Broadsheet - the broads don't care.

I have to agree with Laura, the dissonance between those two adjacent pieces is palapable. Surely the celebrity stuff could easily be moved to The Fix, where it can be safely ignored by people (like myself) who don't care two whits about it? Meanwhile, Broadsheet could be reworked to focus on the pieces with real impact. Indeed, it could even be (pardon the term) broadened to cover all news that touches on gender issues, rather than just pigeonholeing news as "women specific".

I humbly suggest a transmogrification along these lines. I'll go further and suggest a new name, "Liaison", which is an almost-anagram of Salon and which implies that it's a go-between for all gender-based news. The seed is already here, in the excellent pieces you have posted interspersed among the fluff. All that's need is a move to a more concentrated format. Keep the important news and, instead of ghetto-izing women, ghetto-ize the trivial stuff.

Mari L, it is human nature to gavitate towards what is easy. Cafes are easy. The brutality of the Congo for women is not. That is not to say that it does not intensely impact every person who reads about it. My guess is that this story hits each of us in the gut because we all know precisely that is could be any of us. That is hard, not easy. A lot of people are tired, because while it's not the Congo, life can still be hard for women, even in Chicago. Sometimes it's easier to transfer that anguish into something that is easier to manage - like contributing to the understanding of societal expectations of parenting or the bridging of community values in your own community. I don't think it's fair to equate the two. There is so much injustice in the world, and much of it targeted towards women. We do need to speak up, send money and help where we can, but we can only to so much, and first and foremost we need to take care of our own communities. Really, what do you suggest the people in Andersonville do to help that woman? Give specific suggestions rather than chastising them for trying to affect what they can.

I don't know to what extent this has affected other potential commenters, but my experience, particularly at college, has taught me to be careful about lobbing criticisms at developing countries. Maybe Liberia is the worst place on Earth to be a woman, but as a woman in a very privileged place who has never been there, I'm not sure what I can contribute to the conversation without risking sounding smug, pitying, or some horrible bourgeois combination of the two.

Although I didn't comment on the children-in-cafes thread, I understand why it's safer, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that it is. The cafe issues are a lot closer to home. Most of Salon's readers can talk about their personal experiences being in kid-free spaces, but few of us can talk about Liberia's grinding poverty and gender inequity with the same familiarity.

I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I don't have anything to say about this story because I'm sure I can't comprehend the depth of the Congolese woman's suffering, and I certainly don't have any answers about what to do about her plight. I have no idea how to solve Liberia's staggering problems, either. It seems a little unseemly to pontificate about someone else's life or death struggles from my position of privileged ignorance. I can't think of anything to say that wouldn't seem presumptuous or trite. But clearly MariL is morally superior to me, so maybe she'll get the discussion rolling. Rather than attacking the rest of us for not having anything to say or using the article as a platform to criticize Broadside, why don't you tell us what you think about the issues raised?

I eagerly await hearing your thoughts.