Half the Sky presents an up close and personal look at the atrocities inflicted on women in many parts of the world: Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Iraq…just to name a few. Kristof and WuDunn travelled the world to document stories of the women they met and befriended. It will rip your heart out to read this book. There is one example after another of the most inhumane treatment imaginable…..sex trafficking, rape of girls as young as 6 years old, torture, infanticide (killing girl babies), honor killing (death by torture for not remaining a virgin until marriage), genital mutilation (called female circumcision), medical neglect during child birth, and poor health care in general, simply because they are female. And I haven’t even mentioned AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa 6 percent of adults are infected with AIDS. But perhaps it is far more since in many areas there are no hospitals, no clinics, no doctors, and no medical supplies.
Ever since I read this book I have been struggling with how to present my thoughts. I have mixed feelings about Half the Sky. Kristof and WuDunn, his Chinese American wife, are both Pulitzer Prize winners who have made outstanding contributions to journalism in their reporting of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and the more recent genocide in Darfur. Their commitment to exposing the brutality and injustice on this earth is extraordinary and should be applauded.
My objection is not in the facts, but in the presentation. Kristof and WuDunn make a blatant plea for your help. As Carolyn See of the Washington Post states, “Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers.” They quote a parable written by Naka Nathaniel, the former Times videographer, and colleague:
A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. “What are you doing, son?” the man asks. “You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.” The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. “It sure made a difference to that one,” he said.
The starfish parable is touching, but that is not what Kristof and WuDunn are advocating here. The little boy was tossing the starfish back to it’s natural environment. Kristof and WuDunn are talking about changing the natural environment for these women. Changing religious and cultural rituals that may have existed for thousands of years; changing them without the support of the foreign governments, religious leaders, and the men who wield all the power. Large portions of many of these countries lack clean water and septic systems. Whole societies suffer from malnutrition, war, unstable governments, and violence. Of course, there are individual cases documented in Half the Sky where a caring person did make a difference for a woman, a family, or a few lives in a remote village somewhere. But that was usually a situation of direct contact – hands on volunteer work. Total commitment!
WuDunn rationalizes that if Western conscious awareness could end “foot binding” in China, it could also solve the problems for women worldwide. She naively believes that foreign criticism of the Chinese practice of “foot binding” helped bring change in China regarding women’s rights. She is completely ignoring the fact that Mao Zedong and the communist party was the force that ended foot binding…all while the Great Leap Forward took over 40 million lives in the process. And to this day China has little regard for foreign opinion or interference.
The authors admit “helping people involves tinkering with the culture, religion, and family relations of a society that we often don’t fully understand.” For example, it is against Islam for a female to see a male physician, so many women have never gone to a Dr. – even if they are dying. They also state, “Of the countries where women are held back and subjected to systematic abuses such as honor killings and genital cutting, a very large proportion are predominantly Muslim.” (page 149)
I recently read Across Many Mountains, a memoir of Tibetan women written by Yangzom Brauen. Yangzom writes, “During a recent visit to Dharamsala, India, current home of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government, Yangzom’s mother witnessed rich Tibetans who exploited their Indian servants and employees. Child labor she saw in hotels and restaurants belonging to Tibetans…children had to work from dawn to dusk while their masters lived in luxury” She concludes ‘Buddhists often maintain that it is important to empathize with other people’s suffering through meditation, helping them more through prayer than with monetary donations or food’. And she was not complaining; simply stating a fact. She expresses no desire to change her native country’s culture. Yangzom’s book is a plea to free Tibet from Chinese rule, so the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers can go home and resume the exploitation in their own land.
And what is to be said about the corruption within the charitable organizations? It is an understatement when Kristof and WuDunn say, “foreign assistance is difficult to get right and sometimes squandered.” One example is the millions of dollars used to support “well meaning” American aid groups in Afghanistan. The money was used to rent houses and offices, “a million dollar fleet of white SUVs”, and massive entertainment for the aids workers, all written off as overhead. Not surprising that the efforts were “particularly ineffective”. (page 161) Another example cited (page 125) “African countries are littered with incomplete and abandoned projects.”
Pardon my cynicism, but I like to know my donations make a difference. My personal philosophy is “charity begins at home”. There are abandoned elderly, and abused women and children right here in the Untied States. There was an article in my local newspaper today written by Kevin Begos and Marc Levy that states “In Pennsylvania, there are usually about 460 calls to a child abuse hotline per day……the hotline, called Child-Line has staffing and technology problems”. Our local government is short on funds. Our over extended Federal Government is borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spends. The authors advocate more foreign aid for women’s issues. They ignore the fact that the U.S. Treasury is broke, and should not be increasing aid for any cause.
And why is helping one woman in a third world country, that may not even want our help, more important than helping one child at home?
Rated 3 Stars. I use a rating scale of 1 to 5. Books rated 1, I seldom finish; books rated 2, I usually finish but would never recommend to anyone. 5 is the highest rating.