Half The Sky Summary

“Women aren’t the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity” (Kristof & WuDunn, 2009, p. xviii). This quote does an excellent job of introducing the issues discussed in the book Half the Sky. In this book, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn present us with the issue of the unjust and cruel treatment of women in today’s world. Women throughout the world are treated in unthinkably bad ways, but the majority of people are not even aware of the suffering these women face on a daily basis. According to Kristof and WuDunn (2009), “Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined” (p. 61). However, Kristof and WuDunn (2009) also point out that if something dramatic such as a school shooting or bombing takes place, it makes breaking news, and everyone is aware of it all at once (p. xiv). Plenty of women are being mistreated every minute of

Detailing the struggles faced by women across the developing world, Half the Sky is an emotional and compelling text providing insight into issues that are essentially, a world away. Half the Sky covers with great depth the hardships and injustices that women are faced with – often as a direct result of cultural, political or economic forces. Throughout the chapters of this book, I was made aware of hardships I had never thought to look into – and have begun to think of the real world implications of my actions, and how I may alter those actions to have a greater impact on disenfranchised populations around the world.

From the beginning of the book, Half the Sky, the stories of Srey Rath, the vibrant girl from Cambodia, and Meena Hasina, the courageous mother from India, and other stories like theirs have helped many people understand the tragedies taking place all over the world. Their stories have inspired the authors and many who have read their stories to dive deeper into thought about worldwide issues plaguing many countries, including the United States. The global issues surrounding women’s health in the beginning of this book include the topics of: the three types of abuses, the inaccuracy of the term “sex trafficking”, and the initiatives to stop slavery.

In the novel, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, written by authors Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in 2009, these two call attention to the oppression of women. These authors label the incidents that occur throughout our world involving women oppression as an epidemic of our generation. The novel demonstrates the severity of sex trafficking, sexual violence, and lack of education of women that are seen amongst us. There exists many relations of opportunities concerning educational and professional studies among the women portrayed in the novel and myself. Although, related opportunities are seen, the underlying severity of what these women endure to reach those opportunities are much more challenging than mine.

Can you imagine being sold to someone that consistently beats you every day and also makes you sell your body for money that you don’t even get too keep. In “Half the Sky”, the author Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn gives the readers a glimpse of the oppression of women worldwide. “Half the Sky” is one of the most important books I have ever read. I would highly recommend this book to everyone. The first three pages I read already had me in tears. What makes this book so outstanding to me was reading and learning about all these different women and girls that has suffered in a way I didn’t think people were doing. Some of the stories were dealt with sex trafficking, maternal death, attacks on women, and not sending girls to school because of income. But the moving portrayals of the survivors improve the issues. Many of these survivors are healthy and doing very well. I never thought most of these stories that was in the book was going on in the world.

This book is a crucial dose of reality for those of us that are spoiled by the comforts we have grown used too. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explain in the book “Half the Sky” why empowering women in the developing world is ethically right and extremely vital.It is a gripping story of how customs and culture have historically oppressed women. The strength of the human rights movement and of actual change across all cultures is going to be asteadfast task of courageous women who give themselves permission to say no to so many years of unthinkable tyrannical cultural customs and fight for a new way of life. Many of us close our eyes

Half the Sky is a movie that discusses the oppression of women around the world. It brings to light the issues that, even in today's society, are still occurring. Women, young adults, and children everywhere in the world are becoming victims to abuse, rape, and being deprived of getting an education. This film documents Nikolas Kristof going around the world with the help of well known people in America to show some of the issues and some organizations that are working to change the way society views women and children. Early in the documentary a shocking statistic was given. It stated that around 60 million to 100 million females are currently missing out of the population. Where are all of these women going, and how are we letting this

Imagine leaving everyone and everything you have ever known to go to a new unknown world and make money to help your family. The amount of stress and anxiety might be too much to handle at first. This was the life of many young women from small villages in Nepal, looking to do whatever it takes to keep a roof on their family’s head. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but what these women expected in the work is not what they got. They were sold into sex slavery, unaware on the struggles they would have to endure in their lives.

The author’s purpose in Half the Sky, a nonfiction book written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is to educate the reader about the challenges that women and girls in low-income countries face and to offer solutions on how to turn this oppression into opportunity for these women and the countries that they come from. Kristof and WuDunn are able to express their purpose by connecting real stories from women half way across the world to facts about the situations that they are in, “Saima [a Pakistani women who has defeated all odds by utlizing microcredit] is a successful participant in the microcredit revolution sweeping the developing world....Captialism, it turns out, can achieve what charity and good intentions sometimes cannot”

Reading chapter 1 of Half The Sky, human trafficking is not something you can simply read about it, but must live the experience to truly feel its impact. As an American who has live his whole life protect by its wealth and strong resources, to define the term trafficking is not merely just a female or even man to provide sexual services to clients. In country such as India, it can be view as rite of passage where one does not have a choice to reject offers from brothels that wishes to lessen women body, and vice versa there voice. It is not just a form of slavery that rivals plantation owners from the south who view those of darker completion as there inferiors. It is something that has their own terrors of horror where you’re not just force

Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s novel, Half the Sky, is primarily a call for social equality and freedom from oppression for women across the globe. The authors are actively taking the first step of achieving a global feminist movement by informing Westerners of the injustices are that are being done to women worldwide in the name of tradition and culture; they do this through personal stories and by exposing legal or cultural inequalities. As Cynthia Enloe (2004) writes in The Curious Feminist, “if something is accepted as “traditional”- inheritance passing through the male line…it can be

Siri’s story illustrates the complicated dynamics of sex trafficking. Prostitution and sex work in general has become part of the global economy (Truong 1996). Some women choose to go into the sex industry while others are deceived or forced into it. Human trafficking networks usually use deception, coercion, or force to push women into sexual slavery. Some women migrate with the knowledge that they wil l be doing sex

"Sex Slaves" is a documentary about Ukrainian women who are sold in Turkey into the multi-billion-dollar international business of sex slavery. It starts in the city of Odessa, Ukraine, a city in which many people live in poverty, and hence has become a “major hub” for sex traffickers. Traffickers target poor, uneducated girls and lured them with the promise that they will be working abroad in legitimate jobs and making big money but as soon as they arrive in Turkey they are sold to pimps. This documentary shares testimonies of those who were once trapped in this business along with live, secret footage from actual traffickers and testimonies from convicted traffickers. According to some of the victims, they were promised they will be release

An article released by the BBC entitled “Horrors of India’s Brothels Documented” brought this shocking global issue to my attention. The article provides information about a young Indian girl who was only 11 when she was sold into sex slavery by her neighbor (who had persuaded her family to let her go with him to Mumbai); she was taken from her impoverished village in West Bangel. Brutally raped the first night she arrived in a brothel, Guddi is only one of 20,000 sex workers in that specific area [Kamathipura] (2013). The article elaborates on the history of sex slavery in India. It points out that laws have recently been put into place against human trafficking. However, the laws are not being strongly enforced due to the sheer number of

The modern world today is proud to recognize the equality that has been acknowledged between age, gender, and race. Women are beginning to be treated as equals with men, in new customs, lifestyle, society, and economy. Today, women are freer and are liberated from their traditional roles as housewives, and are pursuing their hopes and dreams. However, this is not the case in many regions of the world. In the developing countries, thousands of females are dehumanized by prostitution and the trafficking of women and children is dehumanizing which serves only to benefit men. It exploits and violates the rights of women in the developing world. Sexual exploitation, which includes sex tourism,