Last updated: August 10, 2023

I look on this blog post as perhaps a little bit of vintage 1970s consciousness-raising, using twenty-first century tools.  I have just re-read the book “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” written by the Pulitzer Prize winning husband and wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  Published in 2009, the statistics are surely not up to date, but it gives a thorough accounting of the many ways women (in developing and/or war-torn countries especially) are cruelly mistreated, and the risks that are associated with just being born female.  Kristof and WuDunn have spent years traveling the globe as journalists and have seen with their own eyes the devastating results of war, poverty and cultural misogyny. They speak from a position of direct knowledge.

The book begins by examining girls/women who have been sex trafficked across borders and/or pressed into slavery in dingy brothels, particularly in Asia.  Women (often young teenage girls from rural areas) are kidnapped or tricked into situations that end with them being held against their will and forced into prostitution.  It seems so outrageously horrific that there continues to be slavery in this our twenty-first century!  This book relates specifics and we should absolutely not remain silent about sex trafficking!  Even if they are not forced into sex slavery, women around the world are beaten and raped at a crazy high rate.  Of course this includes (more recently than this book) the abduction by Boko Haram of 276 girls in Chibok, Nigeria in 2014.  Most if not all of these girls were most surely raped and forced into marriage with their captors.

Half the Sky puts names and faces on women’s stories and also addresses the continued existence of female genital mutilation, honor killings, and female infanticide.  One of the most haunting issues I was unaware of before reading this book is the prevalence of fistulas that occur with girls/women who have complications during pregnancy and childbirth.  It is relatively common for young girls in Africa particularly, who become pregnant at 13 or 14 years old, when their pelvises are not yet developed enough to more safely navigate childbirth.  Their bodies are torn so that their urine and feces run down their legs unchecked, usually leading them to be ostracized from their community because of their odor. This can only be repaired by surgery, but women in rural areas do not always have the financial resources or access to clinics where they can be treated.

While this all sounds hopelessly negative, which it really is, Half the Sky also tells the stories of women who have escaped or been stitched together or who have persevered in facing down the violence, and who have turned their new life toward helping others.  For almost every horrific story related, there is a comparable success story that holds out hope.  However, the cultural aspects are all really complicated and unfamiliar to us and this book is careful to explain that.  Women return to prostitution due to drug addictions, women die in childbirth even when they get health care at clinics, and women themselves run some of the brothels.  In the end, Kristof and WuDunn acknowledge that the best hope for populations that are stagnating in poverty or who are refugees from war is to educate the women, help them to establish viable businesses and encourage them to have smaller families.

If you really want to open your eyes to what is happening to women worldwide, you definitely need to read this book, Wake up, friends!  You cannot read this book and go back to your old world view of how things operate.  The great thing is that there are three full pages worth of reference listings of non-profits that we can support.  It’s easy enough to donate to larger, better-known, Western aid organizations, but often those established by fundamental grassroots efforts provide for more effective change.

Here are some links I have pulled from the book, including some that have formed at the grassroots.  I last checked all of the URLs to be sure they still exist and updated the links on August 10, 2023.

Anti-sex trafficking: www.somaly.org

Maternity health and fistula repair: www.fistulafoundation.org  or www.ednahospital.org

Active in combatting female genital cutting: www.tostan.org

Reproductive health: www.mariestopes.org

And here are 4 other ways to support women worldwide:

1. Add your name to letters advocating for women (similar to an Amnesty International approach) at equalitynow.org
2. Support micro-loans to women at kiva.org or www.globalgiving.org
3. Sponsor a girl/woman at womenforwomen.org for $35/month.
4. Sign up for e-mail updates on abuses against women worldwide at worldpulse.com or www.womensenews.org.

 

Reference: Kristof, Nicholas and WuDunn, Sheryl, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, New York, NY, 2009.

Image: Half the Sky, jacket images by Wes Thompson/Flirt Photography and Nicholas Kristof, jacket design by Chip Kidd.