First of all, India and China, you're right, there are huge human rights violations in both countries, without a doubt. They're both hugely populous and they're both very poor. Whenever you have poverty, you have human rights violations. They go hand in hand. Poverty itself, arguably, is a human rights violation, but I won't bother going there right now.
Of course, the fundamental difference between China and India is that India is a democracy, and you can work in democracies. You can appeal to those democratic principles. I've worked in India, and there's a world of difference with China, because in a country like China, where the government is the ultimate source of all knowledge and power, everything depends on the sensibility of who is in charge. If by definition they do not believe in the rule of law--as I was saying earlier--you can't work in a place like that unless there's some fundamental recognition of the separation of the judiciary from government, the independence of the judiciary, and you can't talk about people's right to have their day in court and be treated fairly in those kinds of contexts. It's just not doable in that context. You might be able to work a little bit in one place here or one place there, depending on the local politician, but you're always at the mercy of the ultimate dictator.
In India, on the other hand--it's highly possible and it has been done--you can appeal to the fundamental values of the country to make change, you can identify needs, you can identify abuses, and you can work through what they themselves have embraced as their own values. You go to their constitution. You can look at that and use that, and people within their own country can use that, and to have the values, the template in place is critical to progress.
So yes, there are abuses in both, but the ability to change that is far different in one country from the other.
On your questions of gender equality, and pointing to certain situations where in India and then Pakistan there have been female leaders, and whether or not that indicates that a country has achieved more gender equality than a country like Canada, no. Most females who have led countries have done so because--and especially in India and Pakistan--they were related to males who had those positions ahead of them. And the Philippines is the same, whereas Margaret Thatcher is a different example in England. What's important, I think, is developing a culture of commitment to gender equality in the country, so you don't see people at the top achieving those places episodically, but you see within the entire population the access to education, access to jobs, access to reproductive control, access to appropriate child care supports, and things like that, which can enable women to participate. Enabling ordinary women across the board in the population to participate is key to gender equality. It isn't just opening up a space at the top for the widow of a former prime minister or something like that.
In other words, you have to create this broad-based commitment and culture of gender equality, and in places that have embraced that, there are far more women participating at all levels. It would be nice in Canada to have more women participate, but if you look at--