I’m currently reading a book, “Half the Sky” by Pulitzer Prize winning couple Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on the plight of mainly poor women around the world. They make a compelling and often heart–wrenching case that issues affecting this demographic, like the sex trafficking, selective abortions, poor maternal health -- issues that often get little press – are the most pressing human rights issues of our day.


The stories they tell are unapologetically graphic and at times even turn my stomach. They tell stories of women in India being disfigured from acid thrown in their face because they’ve rejected an admirer; of women in Ethiopia being kidnapped and gang raped if a suitor cannot come up with her bride price, thereby reducing her worth and increasing his bargaining power (these women often end up marrying their rapist); of women being brutally stoned to death for alleged but unproven affairs; of a shocking number of women in the Congo being raped with knifes and sticks as a tool of war; of women let to die because of complications from birth which leave them incontinent, of women (girls really) who are promised jobs and then tricked into brothels to work as sex slaves; of girls who are sold for $10 to abusers, of girls whose brothers preferentially get medicine and education while they are left to wilt. As a reader, you are struck as much by the naked violence and brutality as by the gross injustice these women face.


The authors counter each horrific tale with another of hope. They talk about the valiant efforts of NGOs, survivors and courageous individuals to make positive change. But you are still left with an overwhelming sense of the profound injustice and cruelty that so many are left to endure.

I suppose I always knew about these issues in the abstract, but the authors do a remarkable job of making these issues deeply personal with stories and often pictures of the affected women and girls. If you are human, you will be moved by their accounts.


The injustices in “Half the Sky” infuriate me so much I can’t read it before I go to bed, and my husband doesn’t understand why I keep reading it at all. (Poor man has to endure my outraged tirades and sour moods.)


I guess I feel I have to learn about these things in all their raw and explicit detail to really grasp the reality that some women – who, lets face it, could just as easily be me were I born in most parts of the world – face. If my sisters around the world have to endure such sharp injustice and pain, the absolute least I can do is know about it. But after reading this book, I defy anyone to just “know” about it and not do more.