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Literary Link
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
 “The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.”
In Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, released in September, Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn launch a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
Kristof and WuDunn guide readers through an odyssey from Africa to Asia to meet extraordinary women struggling to overcome incredible odds. From sex slavery in Cambodia to early marriage in Ethiopia, the authors draw on the breadth of their combined reporting experience to depict the challenges women face each and every day with anger, sadness, clarity, and ultimately, hope.
At Pathfinder, we applaud two such accomplished journalists for taking on the issue of oppression of the world’s women and the important role that women play in changing the lives of their communities and nations. We believe the book is a powerful testament to the strength of women and agree that women are remarkable change agents—not just beneficiaries. We are also delighted that the work of two of our longstanding local partners, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Cooperative (BRAC) and the Ethiopian Women Lawyer’s Association (EWLA) is featured and one incredible woman, Woinshet Zebene, whom many Pathfinder staff have personally assisted, is able to share her powerful story. Unfortunately, Kristof and WuDunn do not fully address the inability of women to control their own fertility as one critical form of oppression. Access to contraceptives is vital to empowering women and enabling them to live healthy productive, lives. However, WuDunn and Kristof do a wonderful job highlighting the importance of women and the power we all have to foster change.
WuDunn and Kristof said, “The book will help give people context, but the real challenging and gritty work is being done on the ground in the rural villages, the brothel districts and the makeshift hospitals by the NGOs who specialize in helping women.”
At Pathfinder we continue our work, dedicated in our belief that each and every woman we support deserves access to reproductive health care and that the ability to prevent unintended pregnancies, delay, space, and limit births provides her with critical life expanding opportunities that can truly change the future of our world.
Discussion
Pathfinder invites you to share Half the Sky with friends and family and start a dialogue about how Pathfinder’s focus on reproductive health and family planning helps transform the inequality girls and women face every day into opportunity.
In their book, Kristoff and WuDunn “lay out an agenda for the world’s women focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence…; and mass rape.” The solutions they present include girls’ education and microfinance. Half the Sky reflects a growing recognition worldwide that investing in and empowering young girls and women may be the single most effective strategy for reducing extremism and improving the health, economic wellbeing, and political stability of entire nations and regions. For more than fifty years Pathfinder has invested in the sexual and reproductive health of women and girls. We believe that gender inequities contribute to the most devastating health threats women face.
- What relationship do you see between gender inequity and women’s sexual and reproductive health?
- Is lack of control over one’s fertility a form of oppression or inequity? In what way did Half the Sky help you to see some of the consequences of inequity—both in health and socioeconomic terms?
- If you could write a letter to Kristoff and WuDunn to shift their views on the role that sexual and reproductive health plays in helping women to overcome oppression, what would you include? Did Half the Sky change any of your thinking?
- Discuss how different forms of gender inequity affect the sexual and reproductive health of girls and women. Examples include: gender-based violence, lack of control or input on decisions affecting a woman’s health outcome—for example women in many countries must obtain permission from their partner or mother-in-law to seek any form of health care, including contraception or care for life-threatening health needs such as postpartum hemorrhage.
How is what you’ve read in Half the Sky different from your own experience? Are there similarities or differences you see with what women in the US experience? - What impact do these inequities have on the development of women, their families, communities, and nations?
- Having read Half the Sky what advice or thoughts would you share with Pathfinder as we fight gender inequity and improve sexual and reproductive health care?
If you would like to share your response to this feature, please email communications@pathfind.org.
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