Where are the women at AAS?

Women make up about 50 percent of the population in Asia and Africa, but only two women leaders are attending the Asian- African Summit (AAS) that opened on Friday in Jakarta.

The two leaders are Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Mozambique Prime Minister Luisa Dias Diogo.

The total population of Africa is about 850 million and Asia 3.5 billion people. That means there are more than two billion women on the two continents combined.

But even the presence of Arroyo and Diogo seems like great progress compared to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, at which there were no women leaders. -- JP