Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into opportunity for Women World Wide
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Alfred Knopf 2010
Twice weekly, in Nicholas Kristoff’s habitually moving column for The New York Times he does something most journalists tend not to do. Instead of discussing the complex, highbrow subjects of international relations, he brings to his readers’ attention the oft-ignored issues that affect the world’s most vulnerable. In his latest book Half the Sky, Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn go a step further, not only advocating for the rights of women, but arguing that in their empowerment lie the solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. From poverty to security, Kristof and WuDunn make more than a compelling case for engendering our analysis of politics. They manage to recruit most of their readers to what they describe as an incipient but promising movement to emancipate women “and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts.”
In what they describe as a social responsibility equivalent to the abolition of slavery, Kristof and WuDunn effectively argue that like other emancipatory struggles of the past, the new women’s movement faces challenges. One of the most difficult to overcome is not apathy, but rather the feeling by the more privileged that women’s oppression is the result of history, culture, and is therefore a legacy that is difficult to overcome.
Yet with their powerful accounts of female oppression and empowerment, Kristof and WuDunn manage not only to make their readers aware of the extent of the oppression women face. More importantly, they also provide good news. Accounts of successful empowerment demonstrate that the battle against sexual trafficking, slavery, maternal mortality and poverty have solutions. Half the Sky is perhaps best described in the words of the authors themselves, it is a “story of transformation... of change that is already taking place and change that can be accelerated.”
One especially important issue addressed in their book is the prevalence of rape, especially in war. Rape has been present in war in the past, but as of late, women have been increasingly used as a weapon of war. In the case of the Congo and Rwanda, for example, the rape of woman has been used to ostracize the victim, dishonor their family, instill fear in the community and effectively disintegrate the social fabric that keeps communities together. Even though in almost every conflict mortality is disproportionately male, women also face a huge burden both during and after wars, usually as a result of rape.
In Darfur for example, the Sudanese-sponsored Janjaweed militias were “seeking out and gang-raping women of three African tribes, then cutting off their ears or otherwise mutilating them to mark them forever as rape victims.” To make matters worse, so as to prevent the outside world from shaming Sudan into protecting their women, the government punished those who reported rape or sought medical treatment.
However, Kristof and WuDunn make it clear that while these problems are indeed a reality, they can be addressed at the grass-roots level, and that means that ordinary people can help. Half the Sky parallels the stories of difficulty with those of achievement, and in the case of rape the authors chose to highlight the role of a hospital in the Congo that treats rape victims, and one of their special volunteers.
Harper, a 23-year-old American, went to volunteer at the HEAL hospital in the Congo. During her time there she has started a school for children awaiting medical treatment, since it can take several months for them to receive care. She also began a skills training program for women awaiting surgery. The authors explain that her efforts have given victims of sexual violence the opportunity to earn a living and transform their lives. Although financial independence cannot undo what rape victims went through, it can help them create a promising future for themselves and their families.
Other issues addressed in the book include the problem of maternal health. Maternal death is described by Kristof and WuDunn as a cruelty of indifference. Lack of attention to maternal healthcare, for example, leaves more than 3 million women and girls incontinent as a result of fistulas—a condition unfamiliar in the developing world. A fistula is a hole in the tissue of the bladder and the rectum; it is painful and causes urine and feces to trickle constantly through a women’s vagina and down her leg. These injuries, which can result from labor complications or injuries from sexual violence, have become a handicap since women suffering from them are socially rejected because of the smell that accompanies their injury. “The fistula patient is the modern day leper,” but despite its devastating effect, fistulas are very easily cured.
Why is it then that fistula injuries are so prevalent and often ignored? The authors explain that fistulas, like other issues relating to maternal health face three obstacles: They are the problem of poor, rural women. Women, they argue, are considered an expendable commodity in the developing world.
These are the sorts of injustices that the accounts in Half the Sky aim to end. By inspiring those with resources, be they time or money, Kristof and WuDunn hope to bring to people’s attention the plight of those who are regularly unheard. Their book is moving for its encouragement, and its accounts of oppression are reason enough to read it. In profiling the types of organizations that elicit real change, the authors also do an important part in supporting their measures and likely improve their success rate. What is most commendable, however, is that not only do the author’s give a voice to the marginalized, they also offer tentative solutions to serious problems.
