Friday, January 8, 2010
By Mindelle Jacobs
Winnipeg Sun (Canada)
Occasionally, an extraordinary book comes along with the potential to galvanize people into reaching beyond their own little spheres to help someone impoverished elsewhere in the world.
That book is Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, a passionate clarion call to help stop the brutal oppression of females in the developing world.
Undoubtedly, you have read plenty of chilling statistics on the extent of the human rights violations girls and women suffer. But nothing you have read can possibly prepare you for the shocking, gut-wrenching, yet ultimately uplifting true stories in Half the Sky.
There is Srey, a Cambodian girl who is forced by gangsters to work in a brothel in Malaysia. When she escapes, a police officer sells her to a trafficker who hands her over to a Thai whorehouse.
In India, Meena is kidnapped and enslaved in a brothel for a dozen years. And in case you think all the villains in this book are men, the owner of the brothel is a woman who prostituted her own daughters.
Thirteen-year-old Woin-eshet, in Ethiopia, is kidnapped and raped in a rural area where that's what men do to the girls they want to marry.
There is Dina, from the eastern Congo, who is gang raped by five men who then shove a stick inside her. The stick causes a fistula, or hole, in her tissues and leaves her incontinent and paralyzed.
Make no mistake. Half the Sky isn't unrelentingly grim, even though it chronicles the brutally creative ways women are abused in the Third World. Aid organizations and individuals determined to make a difference are helping the oppressed women of the world one female at a time.
Srey now sells shirts, hats and costume jewelry in a little stall. Meena is free and working as a community organizer, trying to discourage parents from prostituting their daughters. Woineshet is finishing high school and plans to study law.
Challenge
Kristof and WuDunn, the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism as New York Times correspondents, are challenging us all to battle gender inequality as fiercely as good people fought slavery in the 19th century and totalitarianism in the 20th.
"People get away with enslaving village girls for the same reason that people got away with enslaving blacks 200 years ago: The victims are perceived as discounted humans," they write.
Half the Sky is a beautifully written, heartfelt exhortation to empower oppressed women by, for instance, educating girls, reducing maternal mortality and expanding microfinance.
"Women and girls cloistered in huts, uneducated, unemployed and unable to contribute significantly to the world represent a vast seam of human gold that is never mined," the authors write.
And countries that repress women -- mainly nations with large Muslim populations -- tend to be economic laggards that breed terrorism, they add.
Read this book and then make a difference by donating to a group, like CARE Canada, that supports women in the Third World. (Check out halftheskymovement.org for details.)
A documentary based on the book will be aired March 4 in Cineplex theatres in major cities across Canada with a portion of the proceeds going to CARE Canada.
"We've seen firsthand how empowerment of women makes a difference in an entire community," says CARE Canada spokesman Andrea Lanthier-Seymour. "These are real stories. They're stories we see everywhere we go."
That book is Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, a passionate clarion call to help stop the brutal oppression of females in the developing world.
Undoubtedly, you have read plenty of chilling statistics on the extent of the human rights violations girls and women suffer. But nothing you have read can possibly prepare you for the shocking, gut-wrenching, yet ultimately uplifting true stories in Half the Sky.
There is Srey, a Cambodian girl who is forced by gangsters to work in a brothel in Malaysia. When she escapes, a police officer sells her to a trafficker who hands her over to a Thai whorehouse.
In India, Meena is kidnapped and enslaved in a brothel for a dozen years. And in case you think all the villains in this book are men, the owner of the brothel is a woman who prostituted her own daughters.
Thirteen-year-old Woin-eshet, in Ethiopia, is kidnapped and raped in a rural area where that's what men do to the girls they want to marry.
There is Dina, from the eastern Congo, who is gang raped by five men who then shove a stick inside her. The stick causes a fistula, or hole, in her tissues and leaves her incontinent and paralyzed.
Make no mistake. Half the Sky isn't unrelentingly grim, even though it chronicles the brutally creative ways women are abused in the Third World. Aid organizations and individuals determined to make a difference are helping the oppressed women of the world one female at a time.
Srey now sells shirts, hats and costume jewelry in a little stall. Meena is free and working as a community organizer, trying to discourage parents from prostituting their daughters. Woineshet is finishing high school and plans to study law.
Challenge
Kristof and WuDunn, the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism as New York Times correspondents, are challenging us all to battle gender inequality as fiercely as good people fought slavery in the 19th century and totalitarianism in the 20th.
"People get away with enslaving village girls for the same reason that people got away with enslaving blacks 200 years ago: The victims are perceived as discounted humans," they write.
Half the Sky is a beautifully written, heartfelt exhortation to empower oppressed women by, for instance, educating girls, reducing maternal mortality and expanding microfinance.
"Women and girls cloistered in huts, uneducated, unemployed and unable to contribute significantly to the world represent a vast seam of human gold that is never mined," the authors write.
And countries that repress women -- mainly nations with large Muslim populations -- tend to be economic laggards that breed terrorism, they add.
Read this book and then make a difference by donating to a group, like CARE Canada, that supports women in the Third World. (Check out halftheskymovement.org for details.)
A documentary based on the book will be aired March 4 in Cineplex theatres in major cities across Canada with a portion of the proceeds going to CARE Canada.
"We've seen firsthand how empowerment of women makes a difference in an entire community," says CARE Canada spokesman Andrea Lanthier-Seymour. "These are real stories. They're stories we see everywhere we go."
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