What reparation can women seek — like the 40 acres and a mule due slaves after the American Civil War — to compensate our 2000 years of discrimination? I have yet to come up with a comparable formula for paying back the historically abused majority of the planet — known as “females” — who remain the largest earthly class of victims of prejudice.

Misogyny is not just an American problem — it’s a global one. A recent report described the justice system in Kabul, Afghanistan, a country that we are allegedly making safe for “democracy.” If one man kills another there, the family of the killer must compensate the victim’s family.

Since Afghanistan’s cash economy is mythical, the “payment” may involve the handing over of a daughter as a bride for a son of the injured family. Some gratuitously suggest that such a woman, being the relative of the killer, would probably not be “very well liked” in her new family (read: even more abused and degraded than women there normally are).

Prejudice and violence against women are not always this blatant, of course. Here in the US, such prejudice can be very subtle, but it has a long reach, and even women thought to be powerful can be targets.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, can’t possibly pass every test established for her by a cynical and ignorant gang that is determined to hate her, mostly because of an accident of anatomy. If women are second-class citizens in America, brilliant, strong, accomplished women are even lower than that in too many US circles.

Enter Barack Obama, to rescue those who cannot possibly vote for Hillary for president in 2008. Obama was a virtual unknown outside his state of Illinois prior to his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, yet suddenly he is the great black hope of those who may still hate blacks, but will take Obama over a white woman any day of the week, if power and control are in question.

Now comes the news (which has barely seeped out beyond the Chicago press) that Obama had his own bad land deal. He bought land next to his home from Antoin “Tony” Rezko, an indicted fund-raiser who, according to Obama, has brought in as much as $60,000 in campaign cash for him, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

With Hillary’s endless “Whitewater” crucifixion (which turned up no illegalities) in the past, some might call Obama’s current dilemma “Blackwater.” But that won’t happen, since criticism of people of color guarantees an outcry of “racism.” Women, however, remain fair game.

Long after the last hungry child in Darfur gets a full meal on a regular basis, the world goes color-blind, the elderly receive free prescriptions, and all nations, including our own, disavow nuclear weapons for real, women will probably still be thrown under the philosophical bus.

We don’t want 40 acres and a mule — but equal opportunity and protection would be a good start.