From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. …
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women's potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it's also the best strategy for fighting poverty.Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen. - From the Hardcover edition.
This is a most compelling, relevant, and urgent book on injustice in the modern world. Even while using vivid and often horrifying anecdotes to make clear the plight of women worldwide, there are no shock-and-awe tactics here; every claim is backed with research and vetted for broken assumptions. Every opportunity is taken to move the reader from their armchair into a place of progress.
Foreign aid is incredibly difficult to get right, and this book provides a great argument for the necessity of empiricism in assessing interventions. The authors examine the primary threats to women in the developing world: Sex trafficking, death in childbirth, lack of female education, etc. and analyzes what has worked -- and failed to work -- to address each problem. The results are often surprising. Overall, this book provides a useful blueprint for how we should be directing money and political will to move things forward.
A large group, about a dozen women. And Bruce. Mostly this bunch of bleeding-heart Portland liberals agreed with the premise, and appreciated the research that the authors had done. It could be very difficult to read though, and best taken in small doses. Ruth Ann devoured the statistics, while others preferred the personal anecdotes interspersed between the numbers. Because it has been statistically shown that human beings are compelled more by individuals than by numbers.
