Major and Minor Quotes

“A son is an indispensable treasure, while a wife is replaceable.” (Introduction, p. xvi)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Gender inequality is rampant in many of the world’s highly conservative societies. Male children are seen as having exceptional value that their parents and the greater society respect and promote. As the quote emphasizes, sons are indispensable in these communities because they are so highly valued, while women are seen as nearly valueless or less than human. For this reason, they are considered replaceable, like inanimate objects that can be thrown away at the whim of the “owner” (parents, husband, or society).

This value system allows, even lauds, parents’ actions that are centered on assuring the welfare of their sons and ignoring the welfare of their daughters. This extreme gender inequality means that parents will educate their sons but not their daughters. They will spend whatever money they have on health care for their sons while ignoring illness and abuse suffered by their daughters. Sons grow up to be men who are acculturated to ruthlessly dominate the women in their lives. Girls grow up to be women who are valued only if they produce sons for their husband, work tirelessly for his benefit, and submit to whatever abuse he metes out. Throughout this book, Kristof and WuDunn show that it is the lack of gender equality, arising from this enormous chasm in how each gender is viewed and valued, that leads to the often-horrific abuse of girls and women. 

“The tools to crush modern [sex] slavery exist, but the political will is lacking.” (Chapter 2, p. 24)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Many nations that are hubs for the trafficking of young girls and women have laws that criminalize such inhumane behavior. These laws are intended as tools to stop and hopefully eradicate commercial sexual exploitation. However, the laws are toothless when governments and other officials—particularly local police—deliberately fail to enforce them. In most cases, Kristof and WuDunn report, police and other officials are bribed by brothels and traffickers to look the other way. Bribery is widespread and recognized as such, but in many countries, it is ignored even by top political officials.

Wealthy developed nations and their citizens have both the revenue and the power to work toward eradicating sex trafficking in developing nations. These are tools that can be applied to solving the problem of trafficking and sexual enslavement. Too often, though, these powerful tools are not used because governments and individuals continue to discount the inhumane treatment of girls and women in poor nations. Or, as the authors point out, those seeking to help may use their tools (money, political or economic persuasion) in ineffective ways, such as funding women’s rights groups only in major cities and not in impoverished rural communities. The West may urge national governments in developing nations to pass laws criminalizing trafficking and sexual slavery, but, as stated above, politicians may never insist that the laws be enforced. 

“Stoic docility . . . acceptance of any decree by a man—is drilled into girls . . . from [infancy].” (Chapter 3, p. 47)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: The traditions that hinder gender equality may date back hundreds or even thousands of years. Often, the devaluation of girls and women is defended as a vital and integral part of the local or national culture. When misogyny is so deeply rooted and deemed so culturally important, it is transmitted from infancy. It’s imbibed with “mother’s milk” and becomes ingrained in the minds of boys and girls alike.

Girls are devalued in patriarchal societies that demand their submission to any and all ill treatment males may inflict on them. Throughout Half the Sky, Kristof and WuDunn provide examples of this pattern across continents and cultures. In each case, because girls have internalized their total lack of status and value since early childhood, they accept this ill treatment and submit to male abuse without complaint. In some cases, women come to insist that girls be subjected to the same mistreatment that they endured in their childhood. The case of genital cutting in eastern Africa, discussed in Chapter 13, exemplifies this behavior. In situations where girls and women become resigned to their own abuse, those seeking to help face a special challenge: they must change attitudes within a local culture instead of dictating change from outside.

“People were saying I broke tradition.” (Chapter 4, p. 65)

—Woineshet Zebene

Analysis: As a teenager, Woineshet Zebene was kidnapped and raped by a young man who wanted to marry her. The Ethiopian law of the time effectively encouraged so-called bride abduction by protecting men from prosecution for the rape of women they later married. Moreover, in rural Ethiopia, a girl who is raped is considered fatally shamed and is almost always shunned by her family and neighbors. The only way a rape victim can regain respect is to marry the man who raped her, and bride abductors openly exploit this social norm. According to these traditions, all a man must do is rape the girl he wants to marry, and she seemingly has no choice but to marry him to avoid life-destroying shame.

Woineshet, however, did not accept forced marriage as her fate. Instead, she reported her rapist to the police. Doing that was viewed as a terrible violation of tradition: the public was less outraged by the rape itself than by Woineshet’s flouting of the age-old tradition of regaining her honor by marrying her rapist (whom she didn’t even know). Most people familiar with the local traditions and legal climate expected the rapist to avoid any legal consequences for his action. To the surprise of many, the rapist was charged and convicted for the rape, and he spent time in jail.

“Oppressive social customs [are] adhered to by men and women alike.” (Chapter 4, p. 69)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Chapter 4 exposes the accepted practices of female infanticide and the routine beating of women in conservative societies. Needless to say, both behaviors are egregious examples of the oppression on which Half the Sky attempts to shine a light. In cultures where the killing of female infants is widely practiced, the act is not considered murder but is socially acceptable behavior. A wife who gives birth to a female infant may be shamed by her neighbors or discarded by her husband because she didn’t provide him with valuable sons, only valueless daughters. This fear of abandonment was a major cause for Saima Muhammad to seek a means of supporting herself and her family.

Girls and women are considered natural targets for beatings in families in highly conservative countries. Girls are frequently beaten for perceived misbehavior or simply out of anger, while young married women are routinely the victims of beatings by their husbands or other relatives, even female relatives. Yet because girls have internalized and accepted their low status from an early age, they accept what are often vicious beatings as their due. A married woman may be beaten for a perceived offense that never occurred because her in-laws use unprovoked beatings as a means of keeping her in what they deem her rightful place. 

“Rape becomes a tool of war in conservative societies . . . because female sexuality is so sacred.” (Chapter 5, p. 83)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: In societies that view girls and women merely as property, fathers and husbands come to view the misuse of this “property” as a personal outrage to themselves. In this context, the virginity of girls and young, unmarried women comes to be considered sacred, and its loss is seen as an insupportable insult to the male “owners.” The suffering endured by the woman during the rape itself is—for both the perpetrators and the men who consider themselves victimized—beside the point. What’s important, in their view, is the social ostracism and familial shame brought by the violation of virginity.

For this reason, rape is distressingly common as a weapon in conflicts between highly conservative societies. By raping a girl or woman belonging to the enemy, the attacker is in effect destroying her family. The rape survivor will typically be shunned and abandoned, but the family cannot regain its honor until it enacts vengeance against the enemy who raped her and shamed them. Usually, the affected families have no weapons or means to exact revenge for the outrage, which only adds to their shame. Rape has been used as a weapon of war in many places, including Congo, where it contributed to the destruction of many local societies. When all or most of the women in a village are raped by the enemy, the families have no recourse, no way to avenge the outrage and redeem their honor and traditional family structure.

“Fistula patients are . . . helpless . . . voiceless . . . are pariahs because they are women.” (Chapter 6, p. 97)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: In many socially conservative and patriarchal societies, girls are given in marriage when they are young teenagers whose bodies are not yet fully developed. Often, when teenagers become pregnant, their birth canal is not large enough for the passage of the fetus during childbirth. Yet the contractions that are part of labor continue to force the fetus toward and into the birth canal, where it becomes stuck. This situation, which can last for days, is known as obstructed labor. The contractions themselves are often so strong and unrelenting that they create a fistula: a rupture of the bladder and/or colon.

Much of the time, a pregnant woman from a poor rural area faces childbirth alone, either because no midwives are available or because her family cannot or will not spend money on transporting her to a maternity hospital. In the case of obstructed labor, the woman then has no choice but to endure the agony as her internal organs are essentially torn apart. Some such women die from sepsis as the fetus decays while stuck in the birth canal. “Luckier” women may get the help they need when the baby is delivered surgically via a caesarean section, only to experience long-term suffering from the fistula that occurred during labor. Untreated fistulas cause incontinence, leading to a foul smell that often leaves the sufferer shunned by her family and neighbors. Many go off to live their lives alone in shacks, ostracized until they somehow can afford to pay for surgery that corrects the fistula. Most cannot and become lifelong pariahs in their community.

“The news media can count inattention to the issue as another of our failures.” (Chapter 6, p. 98)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Kristof and WuDunn criticize the Western media for ignoring the millions of women in developing nations who die from rape, commercial sexual exploitation, beatings, or treatable but neglected reproductive health problems. Here, the authors are specifically addressing the vast number of poor women who die during childbirth. They point out that the misfortune of a celebrity frequently gets global press coverage. However, the media pay little or no attention to the suffering of many millions of poor, unknown girls and women in developing countries.

Kristof and WuDunn insist that if the media wrote about or showed the suffering these girls and women endure, there would be an outpouring of moral outrage among Westerners, who would likely raise their voices and demand that their government or Western aid organizations take immediate action. The global popularity of Half the Sky and other associated media has indeed raised awareness of this widespread but preventable suffering, generating a worldwide call to action among humanitarians in developed countries. The authors state that if these crimes against women had been on the media’s radar all along, the outcry in the developed world might have started long before this book was published—and millions of lives might have been saved.

“In much of the world, women die because they aren’t thought to matter.” (Chapter 7, p. 115)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: In a wide swath of the world, the lives of women and girls are not valued. Girls and women are marginalized, and their lives are deemed unworthy of attention or action. Many girls and women die after being raped, from sexually transmitted diseases when they’ve been sold into sex trafficking, and when they give birth without access to medical services. The casual abuse of girls and women in developing nations is, Kristof and WuDunn conclude, commonplace and socially acceptable because laws, cultures, and traditions devalue female life.

Maternal mortality is considered a benchmark indicating how much a society values the life of girls and women. On this reasoning, the high maternal mortality rates among poor women in developing countries expose a pattern of widespread indifference to women’s welfare and lives. In fact, maternal mortality in these countries is considered by many to be the result of “the cumulative denial of women’s human rights.” These women are dying in such huge numbers during childbirth because their societies “have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving.” As they do elsewhere in Half the Sky, the authors make the point that there is an ideological as well as a practical barrier to gender equality.

“[It’s a] scandal . . . that 122 million women [worldwide] want contraception and can’t get it.” (Chapter 8, p. 134)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Most women in developing countries want to be able to control the number of children they have. Yet it’s often because of political conflict in Western societies that inexpensive and effective contraception is denied to them.

Lack of contraception in developing nations has arisen partly from the seemingly endless squabbling between religious conservatives and secular liberals in the United States. When aid packages are put together by the US government, religious conservatives lobby against them if they so much as mention the word abortion or termination of a pregnancy. So the entire package is thrown out, including funding for contraception. Secular liberals lobby against aid packages that do not mention abortion as a means of birth control or that, in their view, do not go far enough in aiding poor women in developing countries. So aid packages that displease secular liberals may also be jettisoned—again, along with funding for contraceptives. The United States has been a major funder of aid for poor women in poor countries, but it’s been hamstrung by the conflicting ideas of two opposing factions. Until some compromise or common ground can be reached between American conservatives and liberals, Kristof and WuDunn argue, women in many parts of the world will not have access to the contraception they desperately want and need.   

“The Koran originally was progressive . . . it shouldn’t be allowed to become an apologia for backwardness.” (Chapter 9, p. 152)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: In this chapter, Kristof and WuDunn address the question of whether Islam is inherently misogynistic and hostile to improving the lives of women. They point out that for its time—the seventh century—Islam’s holy book, the Koran, was actually quite progressive. Seventh-century Middle Eastern societies were highly conservative, but the Koran generally taught a greater humanity toward women than the cultural practices it attempted to supersede. The severely restrictive rules that limit women’s behavior in several Muslim-majority nations are not, in fact, prescribed in the Koran. Instead, the authors say, these strictures arise out of age-old societal traditions not directly related to Islam.

In establishing their interpretation of the relationship between Islam and national customs, Kristof and WuDunn note that the same Koranic rules or teachings get interpreted in different ways across cultures. One clear illustration is the issue of modest dress. The Koran famously contains the teaching that women should dress “modestly.” It does not, however, demand that women be covered from head to toe in a burka. In fact, Muslim populations around the world have interpreted the modest-dress requirement in ways specific to their cultures—not to mention their climates. The generic term hijab, referring to any women’s head covering, includes headscarves (widely used in Southeast Asia), turbans (worn by a significant minority in Turkey), and full-face veils known as niqab (worn mainly on the Arabian Peninsula). These variations are based on but not directly dictated by the general principle laid out in the Koran.

“Schooling is . . . often a precondition for girls and women to stand up against injustice.” (Chapter 10, p. 170)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Throughout this book, Kristof and WuDunn repeatedly emphasize how vital the education of girls and women is to their empowerment. In many developing countries, girls are denied education because their parents—and their society—think it’s a waste of time and money to educate them.

In nearly every case described in this book, the girls or women who find the strength to stand up for themselves have some type of education. Girls who were devalued and abused gain self-esteem and financial independence after attending school or learning a trade. The value of education to these impoverished and oppressed girls and women cannot be overestimated. An education liberates a girl or woman and helps her recognize that she has the strength and know-how to fight the oppression and gender inequality that have stunted her life before she attended school. When educated girls and women enter the workforce, their earnings improve social status and quality of life not only for them but for their family, their community, and ultimately their nation. The more girls and women are educated, the greater the collective benefits, and the more motivation the women have to fight the misogynistic injustices of their society. It is perhaps unsurprising that many of them do so by helping to educate others, creating a virtuous cycle of uplift.

“Foreign assistance is difficult to get right, and it sometimes is squandered.” (Chapter 10, p. 178)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Here, Kristof and WuDunn recommend that Western aid organizations stop using a treetop, or top-down, approach to aid and instead adopt a grassroots (bottom-up) approach, which is far more effective. They criticize multiple aspects of the way that Western organizations tend to mete out aid to poor women in developing countries. Their main point, however, is that most often Western aid is directed toward and distributed through official organizations that work out of the developing nation’s capital or other large cities. This treetop approach to aid is largely ineffective—not least because it fails to reach the very poorest, who often live in rural areas.

The authors advise Western aid agencies and those who contribute to them to adopt an approach that is “grassroots” in that, firstly, it relies on local people to identify their own communities’ needs. People in poor rural areas, they observe, resent being told by foreigners what they need and how they should live. Instead, aid agencies should use local organizers who meet with villagers, both men and women, and provide facts about different types of aid. The villagers themselves then decide what type of aid they want. This empowers both the local men and women by making them central to the decision-making process. Once villagers decide on the aid they want, it can be provided through other local people associated with the aid organization.

“Microcredit has done more to bolster the status of women . . . than any laws could accomplish.” (Chapter 11, p. 187)

—Kristof and WuDunn

Analysis: Microcredit, or microfinance, is an approach to helping poor women in developing countries empower themselves. Microcredit entails a small bank or other organization lending a small amount of seed money to a woman in a developing nation to help her start her own business. Recipients of the small loans must show that their business plan is viable, that it will most likely be successful and profitable based on their knowledge of (mostly) local markets, and that they understand the rudiments of how to run a business. The women who receive the loan pay it back with interest from the money they make from their business.

Microfinance has been around since the 1980s, but in recent years it has taken off. Many aid organizations have opened small banks whose sole purpose is to advance microloans to poor rural women. The result, as Kristof and WuDunn report, is that the microfinance revolution has lifted countless women out of poverty. As these women become earners, they gain the respect of their family and local community. They slough off their old status as dependents or subordinates and become valued members of the society because of their economic contributions to it. Many recipients of these microloans expand their business and hire local people to work with them. This further enriches their community and raises the women’s status even more. As women earn their own money, they feel empowered and gain a welcome newfound independence. Many thousands of women in the developing world have improved their status and transformed their lives and the lives of local people after using a microloan to start successful businesses.