This book will shake you up! It did me..and after reading it I wanted to do something to help oppressed women on this planet. The last page of this book lists what you can do to help. One of the ways to help was to support a woman in a struggling country. The organization the authors recommend is Women For Women International. http://www.womenforwomen.org/?gclid=CMaDurGzz6sCFQbwzAodhz2iVg
Take a look.
I have adopted a woman named Futire G Regiepi. My small gift to her each month helps her learn a trade and take care of her family.
Here is a great description of the book and some quotes. Powerful!
(taken from www.bonniesbooks.blogspot.com)
The full title of this book is Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. WuDunn and Kristof were the first married couple ever to receive a Pulitzer for journalism, for their reporting about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Let me start with a perfect, but terrible, word: gendercide (page xvii).
"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 battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine "gendercide" in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century."Wow! In case you aren't into numbers, however, Kristof and WuDunn give plenty of examples of what's happening to women all over the world.
About a woman in Pakistan:
"In Pakistan, we met a young woman from the Christian minority who insisted on choosing her own husband; infuriated at this breach of family honor, her brothers bickered over whether they should kill her or just sell her to a brothel. While they argued, she escaped" (p. 150).About a thug in India:
"One of his specialties was the threat of rape to terrorize anyone who might stand up to him. Murder left inconvenient piles of bodies, requiring bribes to keep the police at bay, while rape is so stigmatizing that the victims could usually be counted on to stay silent. Sexual humiliation was thus an effective and low-cost strategy to intimidate challengers and to control the community. ... The more barbaric the behavior, the more the population was cowed into acquiescence" (p. 49).About women in America:
"During World War I, more American women died in childbirth than American men died in war. ... When women could vote, suddenly their lives became more important, and enfranchising women ended up providing a huge and unanticipated boost to women's health" (p. 116).About women in Afghanistan:
"After the Taliban was ousted in Afghanistan, banditry spread and Amnesty International quoted an aid worker as saying: 'During the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh, she would have been flogged; now, she's raped" (p. 150).
