Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Half the Sky, Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn


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.

Discussion Guide (w/questions & quotes by chapter)  
Short Guide (with start-up questions)
Website:  http://halftheskymovement.org/stories
Get Involved: http://halftheskymovement.org/get-involved
Had you ever heard of The Girl Effect before reading the Introduction? Watch the video at www.thegirleffect.org or watch it again if you have seen it before.

Around the world, a total of 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. An additional 1.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Combined, this is almost half of the world’s population. The burden of poverty falls disproportionately on women and girls – 60 percent of the poorest people on the planet are female. But when women and girls have the opportunity, they can become powerful catalysts for change in their societies. “Half the Sky” helps us recognize that poverty is not inevitable. It is the product of decisions, practices and beliefs that prevent people, especially women and girls, from reaching their full potential. By working together to empower women and girls, we can change the world and help end poverty.

A “snapshot” of our comments:
• Women are disposable and seen as cost (dowry, etc.)
• There is no tool more effective than the empowerment of women.
• Status and role of women is related to a country’s ability to increase their economy.
• When you educate a boy, you are educating an individual. When you educate a girl, you educate a village.
• “Present-ism” – slavery wasn’t viewed all bad (except that I know Queen Isabella said, “No” to slavery in the Caribbean)
• Rwanda – 30% parliament MUST be women
• Social Entrepreneur – use change to be change
• Slave labor in Bombay/Calcutta is said to be the “noble profession of a sex worker”
• How does information like this change or support the way that we as Christians in the United States spend our money?
• What would redemption look like for those freed from slavery?
• People took risks – educating their daughters in “secret schools”

Quotes from book are below:

STATISTICS
“Less than 1% of U.S. foreign aid is specifically targeted to women and girls.” pg.xiv

“...as many infant girls die every week in China as protesters died in the one incident at Tiananmen.” pg.xiv

“About 107 million females are missing from the globe today.......Every year, at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination.” pg.xv

“The best estimate is that a little Indian girl dies from discrimination every four minutes.” pg.xvi

“It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century.” pg.xvii

“More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all of the genocides of the twentieth century.” pg.xvii

“Women aren’t the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.” Pg.xviii

“Empowering girls, some in the military argued, would disempower terrorists.” pg.xxi

“Honor killings, sexual slavery, and genital cutting may seem to Western readers to be tragic but inevitable in a world far, far away.” pg.xxii

“We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts.” pg.xxii

SEXUAL SLAVERY
The authors list the reasons for the rise of sex slavery as the fall of communism, globalization, and AIDS. pg.11

“In a town where police officers, government officials, Hindu priests, and respectable middle class citizens all averted their eyes from forced prostitution, the only audible voice of conscience belonged to an eleven year old boy who was battered each time he spoke up.” pg.13

“Rescuing girls from brothels is important, Krishner believes, but the best way to save them is to prevent them from being trafficked in the first place---which means keeping them in school.” pg.17

“They may not speak to me, but I know what is right and I will stick to it. I will never accept prostitution of myself or my children as long as I breathe.” pg.16

“Rescuing girls from brothels is important, Krishner believes, but the best way to save them is to prevent them from being trafficked in the first place---which means keeping them in school.” pg.17

“When India feels that the West cares as much about slavery as it does about pirated DVDs, it will dispatch people to the border to stop traffickers.” pg.24

“Rescuing girls from brothels is the easy part, however. The challenge is keeping them from returning.” pg.35

A current news story alerts the world to a hostage situation in Pakistan. 140 captives (including a 4 month old) are being held against their will after their freedom from indentured servitude (slavery) was won in court. The “owners” refuse to let them go and threaten to kill them if they do not get back to work. Many of these folks are trapped into lifelong indentured servitude for debts as low as the equivalent of $8.75, (less than the cost of one movie ticket for us). pg.45

CHANGE – BIRTH CONTROL & REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” George Bernard Shaw pg.47

“Education and empowerment training can show girls that femininity does not entail docility, and can nurture assertiveness so that girls and women stand up for themselves.” pg.47

“There will be less trafficking and less rape if more women stop turning the other cheek and begin slapping back.” pg.53

“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or to teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.” pg.54

“In many poor countries, the problem is not so much individual thugs but an entire culture of sexual predation.” pg.61

“We in the West can best help by playing supporting roles to local people.” pg.62

“In talking about misogyny and gender-based violence, it would be easy to slip into the conceit that men are the villains.” pg.66

“Publicity about Pakistan’s harassment of Mukhtar was embarrassing to the Bush administration...” pg.73

“In Darfur, it gradually became clear that 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.” pg.83

“The hospital even accepts gifts of airline miles, to fly staff back and forth...” pg.92

“Preparation for death is that most Reasonable and Seasonable thing, to which you must now apply yourself.” pg.93

“The equivalent of five jumbo jets’ worth of women die in labor each day.” pg.98

“Would the world stand by if it were men who were dying just for completing their reproductive functions?” Asha-Rose Migiro, UN Deputy Secretary General, 2007 pg.109

“During World War I, more American women died in childbirth than American men died in war.” pg.116

“In most societies, mythological or theological explanations were devised to explain why women should suffer in childbirth, and they forestalled efforts to make the process safer. When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were supposed to suffer.” pg.116

“The Catholic Church’s prohibition on artificial means of contraception has very little effect on the behavior of
American Catholics. But its stance endangers millions of lives worldwide.” Christian Century editor John M. Buchanan on Roman Catholic opposition to the distribution of condoms in Africa where AIDS is epidemic as noted in the August 2009 issue of Baptists Today. The indifference that allowed AIDS to spread around the globe?” pg.136

The spread of AIDS is often blamed on promiscuity in Asian and Afric, but “for women the lethal risk factor is often not promiscuity but marriage?” pg.138

“With the best of intentions, pro-life conservatives have taken some positions in reproductive health that actually hurt those whom they are trying to help---and that result in more abortions.” pg.134

The spread of AIDS is often blamed on promiscuity in Asian and Africa. Was it surprising to find that “for women the lethal risk factor is often not promiscuity but marriage?” pg.138

“Conservative Christians contribute very generously to humanitarian causes, but a significant share of the money goes to build magnificent churches.” pg.145

“It would also be useful if there were better mechanisms for people to donate time.” pg.145

“Jail is sometimes the best place for a bold Afghan woman.” pg.156

CHANGE – EDUCATION
A doctor once reportedly told President Woodrow Wilson regarding the suffragettes that “courage in women is often mistaken for insanity”. “The best role for Americans who want to help Muslim women isn’t holding the microphone at the front of the rally but writing checks and carrying the bags in the back.” pg.163

“American organizations would have accomplished much more if they had financed and supported Sakena, rather than dispatching their own representatives.” pg.162

Sakena’s program included eighty secret schools which educated 3800 girls. pg.163

“If we took the foreign aid that goes to guns and weapons and just took one quarter of that and put it into education, that would completely transform this country.” pg.165

SUPPORT/AID – NEEDS TO CONSIDER CULTURAL FACTORS/TRADITIONS
Dai Munji’s story is the model of a successful foreign aid story. pg.169

Cost-effective ways to increase school attendance which include deworming the students, assistance with managing menstruation, iodizing salt, and bribery. Pgs. 171 – 173.

Andrew Mwenda, of Uganda, “complained about the calamitous consequences of ‘the international cocktail of good intentions’” James Shikwati of Kenya “pleaded with Western donors: ‘For God’s sake, please stop’”? pg.176

“Foreign assistance is difficult to get right, and it sometimes is squandered. Yet it is equally clear that some kinds of aid do work; those that have been most effective have involved health and education.” pg.178

“Ann has a finely tuned social conscience....” pg.179

Sixty-five dollars ...Consider the number and extent of lives changed by this one initial microloan to Saima? pg.186

“Microfinance has done more to bolster the status of women, and to protect them from abuse, than any laws could accomplish. Capitalism, it turns out, can achieve what charity and good intentions sometimes cannot.”
pg.187

“...extreme rainfall patterns—either droughts or flooding—are accompanied by a doubling in the numbers of unproductive old women killed for witchcraft, compared to normal years...” pg. 192

“Because men now typically control the purse strings, it appears that the poorest families in the world typically spend approximately ten times as much (20 percent of their income on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitutes, candy, sugary drinks, and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children.” pg.192

The gender differences surrounding the utilization of resources appear to be quite significant. Can it really be as simple as reallocating funds to women? There are cultural factors that allow men to spend income on, what we consider to be, frivolous, and immoral purchases? How do religious beliefs possibly support this lifestyle? “...the Indian constitution was amended to stipulate that one third of the positions of village chief were to be reserved for women.” pg.197

“...the evidence from our own history is that women’s political participation has proved to be of vast, life-saving
benefit to America’s children.” pg.198

“...cultural barriers can be overcome relatively swiftly where there is political will to do so.” pg.206

“So was it cultural imperialism for Westerners to criticize foot-binding and female infanticide? Perhaps. But, it was also the right thing to do.” pg.207

“Implicit in what we’re saying about China is something that sounds shocking to many Americans: Sweatshops have given women a boost.” pg.210 The fair trade movement seeks to ensure safe work environments, free of child and slave labor for farmers and artisans in developing countries while providing a wider market for their goods. In light of the above statement regarding sweatshops, is purchasing fair trade items effective in alleviating the suffering of those involved? Or, is it detrimental for U.S. shoppers to demand safe work environments in developing countries? How does this compare to Westerners speaking against other human rights violations (i.e. foot-binding)?

What advances in the rights of women have you witnessed in your lifetime? In North America? Abroad? Are men and women in our culture equal in every way? Are there still areas where the genders are treated differently in the West?