The phrase "a backwardness" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a state of being behind in development, progress, or modernity, often in a social or cultural context.
Example: "The region's economic policies have led to a noticeable backwardness compared to its neighboring countries."
Alternatives: "a lag" or "a regression".
By 1906 he had come to view the mandarin bureaucracy and the Vietnamese monarchy as symbols of a backwardness that would forever prevent technological progress and the development of an autonomous state.
But when it came also to rebuilding the city, which was wholly demolished, despondency seized the multitude, and a backwardness to engage in a work for which they had no materials; at a time, too, when they rather needed relief and repose from their past labours, than any new demands upon their exhausted strength and impaired fortunes.
The authors go as far as inferring an eastern German "resistance to modernization," a "barrier" to modernization, and a "backwardness" of mentalities from their qualitative study in a rural region of eastern Germany.
All this alongside a cultural backwardness yields a population with a large youth unemployment, who then become susceptible to fundamentalist-jihadi propaganda.
A little backwardness would be healthy".
This is the paradox that I find most curious: we are at once a sophisticated nation benefiting from scientific and technological advances, and yet we can display a surprising backwardness.
As such, he had a firm faith in the progress of man, civilization, and Western Christendom; hence, he saw American slavery as a brutal backwardness that ran counter to the progress of history.
PARIS — Calling itself a defender of free speech and a denouncer of religious backwardness, a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday published several crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, images viewed as a provocation by many Muslims and condemned by the French government as irresponsible at a time of violence and unrest across the Islamic world.
IN A country where 800m people, about 60% of the population, live in the countryside on an average income of less than a dollar a day, rural backwardness weighs heavily on the minds of China's leaders as they dream of joining the ranks of the world's leading economies.
Islam was being redefined as a revolutionary force, and covering one's hair and body was no longer a sign of backwardness; instead, it was a sign of a new generation's embrace of the changing face of Islam.
Halappanavar's death made people who usually ignore the fact that Ireland is a little dot of backwardness in a sea of progressive reproductive values sit up and take note.
