52 Books: Book 27

A few years ago I read Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea and I was truly inspired. During our recent vacation I had the opportunity to read Half the Sky by husband and wife, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and I find myself even more inspired.

While Mortenson's work focuses on building schools in Afghanistan, Kristof and WuDunn look at how women are treated throughout the world. Their book centers on sex trafficking, honor killings, acid attacks and female genital mutilation, to name a few. It gives an overall worldview of how women are treated as less than human in much of the developing world and how that affects mortality of both women and subsequently their children. It is a very eye-opening book that gives valuable insight and presents ideas of how more developed countries can help to eliminate these horrible things. I would definitely recommend reading this book.

Excerpts from the book:

In wealthy countries of the west, discrimination is usually a matter of equal pay or underfunded sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In contrast, in much of the world discrimination is lethal.

Laws matter, but typically changing the law itself accomplishes little... change has to be felt by a culture as well as the legal code.

In much of the world, women die because they aren't thought to matter. There's a strong correlation between counties where women are marginalized and countries with high maternal mortality.

"Women are not dying because of untreatable diseases. They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving." – Journal of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology

Missionaries have been running indispensable health and education networks in some of the poorest countries for decades... those missionaries have invaluable on-the-ground experience. Aid workers and diplomats come and go, but missionaries burrow into a society, learn the local language, send their children to local schools, sometimes stay for life.

If there is to be a successful movement on behalf of women in poor countries, it will have to bridge the God Gulf. Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.

Liberals could emulate the willingness of many evangelicals to tithe – to donate 10 percent of their incomes each year to charity... U.S. religious organizations give $5.4 billion annually to developing countries, more than twice as much given by U.S. foundations.

The best role for Americans who want to help Muslim women isn't holding the microphone at the front of the rally but writing the checks and carrying the bags in the back.

The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings to full-fledged human beings. The economic advantages of empowering women are so vast as to persuade nations to move in that direction. Before long, we will consider sex slaves, honor killings and acid attacks as unfathomable as foot-binding...