 We are here to serve the economy, this belief goes. It's not here to serve us. The third mistake is a belief that men should run the world and that women are their property. While it may seem that women's rights are well advanced and society is nearly egalitarian in the developed world, the United States, Western Europe, and Australia combined are only about a quarter of the population of the world. In India, it's still a common rural practice for men to burn their wives to death simply because it's more convenient than divorce.