Ethiopia

Maternity Leave, Health Care, and Beliefs

The government formally allows for 90 days of maternity leave with full wages paid by the employer, but many rural women cannot claim these benefits.

Many Ethiopian children are without mothers. According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), over 4 million Ethiopian children are orphans, which represents 12 percent of the entire population of children in Ethiopia, with over 2 million having lost their parents to HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). 1.5 million people in Ethiopia are HIV positive, about 4.4 percent of the population. Of children under five who die in Ethiopia, about half die because of malnutrition and 20 percent because of diarrhea from contaminated water.

Ethiopian women also suffer from a lack of education, with a low literacy rate of 23 percent, compared to 50 percent for men. In 2007, 68 percent of girls were enrolled in primary school, but only 19 percent in secondary school. About 40 percent of Ethiopians are Muslim, and about half are Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. The government is secular but dominated by Christians.

The Ethiopian foundation myth holds that the Queen of Sheba, Ethiopia's monarch, visited King Solomon of Israel, a union that resulted in Menelik I, the first king of Ethiopia, who, according to tradition, later traveled to Israel and stole the Ark of the Covenant from King Solomon to avenge his mother. Menelik brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Ethiopia, where, tradition says, it remains to this day, hidden within a monastery in Axum in northern Ethiopia.

...