Japanfan
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I can't comment on what American women believe, but don't think "backwards" is the right word for how women who lack the rights and freedoms we have in the west are perceived. It's just oppression. A woman in Afghanistan who is required to wear a burka, not allowed to earn income, has no access to birth control and can't go anywhere without the company of a male is oppressed, not backwards.
Some research has been conducted to rank women's status in the world by country and as seen by the links below, the rankings vary widely depending on the indicators that are used. Whether/how the indicators (i.e. political representation) translate into actual substantive equality is a limitation and needs to be further investigated. But I've never seen either the United States and Russia near the top of the list. And Iceland is #1 in three of the rankings below, and Denmark #1 once. Scandinavian countries consistently fall in the top ten.
The indicator of political representation is one reason that Canada and the US tend to fall below Scandinavian countries and countries where it would seem women have less equality in relation to the west. And the reason Rwanda scores high (has the highest representation of women in office in the world)
According to the Gender Inequality Index in the United Nations Human Development Report 2015, Norway is #1, (High Human Development). The US is 8, Canada is 9, and Russia 50. The indicators are listed in the index.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII
According to the Forbes top 20 list for 2011, Iceland is #1, Canada is #18, and the US. is #19. Russia didn't make the top 20. The indicators are: women’s access to basic and higher education; women’s health and survival by measures of life expectancy and sex ratio; equality of economic opportunity and participation; and political empowerment.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennago...t-and-worst-countries-for-women/#306b4fac5e66
According to the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap report for 2015, Iceland is again #1, Canada 29, the US 20, and Russia 75. I can't locate the indicators used.
http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/rankings/
A survey based study (7000 female respondents) (indicators human rights, gender equality, income equality, safe and progressive) found Denmark to be 1, Canada 3, US 13, and Russia 29.
http://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-women
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