Abbas Be was held captive in a most brutal manner in a Delhi brothel. After she was freed, she returned to her home city of Hyderabad, became a bookbinder and now puts her sisters through school.
How does a newspaper stay relevant?
No publication has anything even vaguely resembling a comprehensive answer to that question, but in at least one section of the New York Times, for at least one day—Sunday, August 23—the editors have made their newspaper important by devoting the entire NY Times Magazine to the issue of oppression of women worldwide, and the absolute necessity—practical and ethical— of working for women’s rights.
It is not surprising that the central article in the magazine is written by Nicholas Kristof—together with his wife and fellow Pulitzer winner, Sheryl WuDunn, (and with gorgeous photos by Kay Grannan). Kristof is a deeply moral and discerning journalist who is unafraid of advocacy when he feels the cause is righteous.
The article is adapted from Kristof and WuDunn’s new book, Half the Sky, which will be released in early September.
Here is how it begins:
IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.
Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.
The entire article is a shocking and impassioned call to action. For instance there is this:
The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.
For those women who live, mistreatment is sometimes shockingly brutal. If you’re reading this article, the phrase “gender discrimination” might conjure thoughts of unequal pay, underfinanced sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In the developing world, meanwhile, millions of women and girls are actually enslaved. While a precise number is hard to pin down, the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, including sexual servitude. In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report. Girls and women are locked in brothels and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs — to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country.
Yet, Kristof and WuDunn’s purpose is not merely to catalog the horrors. They also come to us carrying armloads of victory stories, astonishing tales of courage displayed by women who, when given only the tiniest bit of help and rescue after ghastly abuse, were able to remake themselves into positive forces for thier families, their communities and themselves.
There are so many problems in our world that it is easy to recoil from the ungraspably large problem of women’s oppression worldwide. Yet, Kristof, WuDunn aim to convince us otherwise, that this complex and multi-faceted problem is in fact a remarkable and timely opportunity that we would be wise to embrace as if our lives depended upon it, which—in this globally intertwined new world of ours —our lives very well may.
In the early 1990s, the United Nations and the World Bank began to proclaim the potential resource that women and girls represent. “Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,” Larry Summers wrote when he was chief economist of the World Bank. Private aid groups and foundations shifted gears as well. “Women are the key to ending hunger in Africa,” declared the Hunger Project. The Center for Global Development issued a major report explaining “why and how to put girls at the center of development.” CARE took women and girls as the centerpiece of its anti-poverty efforts. “Gender inequality hurts economic growth,” Goldman Sachs concluded in a 2008 research report that emphasized how much developing countries could improve their economic performance by educating girls.
Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. “Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.” The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering.
Read the rest here, and watch the audio slideshow here.
And here are easy ways that each of us can get involved.
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PS: Also very much worth reading is Dexter Filkins’ story, A School Bus for Shamsia, about the struggle to keep a school for girls open in the heart of Taliban territory in Afghanistan.
C: “The number of victims of this routine “gendercide†far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.”
I don’t believe that claim for a minute. It’s appears extremely inflated. What’s the source?
C: the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency
Oh, no wonder. Then, I’m sure that the claims are phony.
Your causes would be taken more seriously if honest rather than grossly inflated statistics were reported.
– – –
I see that the organizations suggested by the NYT and that help women are left-leaning and include abortion advocates or providers. What a list. Killing millions of unborn girls seems like a bigger travesty than those outrages that you listed.
Why were no Christian or other faith-based organizations suggested? Seriously. Churches do so much to help and feed people in Africa and across the globe, and many of their efforts are focused on helping women. Of course, leadership in organizations that the NYT suggest most likely hate Christians, and they sure don’t want them competing for donations.
May I suggest that if you want to help women in China and Saudi Arabia, then boycott all products from those nations. It’s those dadgum communists and Muslims that need straightening out.
I have a friend who is helping women of the world. In fact, he’s on the internet every night meeting Russian women and offering to bring them to his house.
– – –
Celeste, I take the problems for real sufferers seriously, but make sure that the information provided is accurate rather than just another attempt to stir up a problem that only donations and more taxes can solve…which they never will.
Disgusted by what he has seen on earth, God decides to destroy it and start over.
He orders one of His angels to appear at the offices of four of America’s leading newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronical, the Washington Post and the New York Times, in order to give them the scoop that He intends to destroy the world in 2 days time.
The next morning, the following headlines appear:
Wall Street Journal: GOD TO DESTROY THE WORLD TOMORROW!! MARKETS WILL CLOSE EARLY!
SF Chronicle: GOD TO END WORLD TOMORROW!! ANTI-RELIGIOUS PROTESTS PLANNED. ACLU TO SUE GOD!!
Washington Post: END OF THE WORLD IS AT HAND, GOD SAYS!! SEE ARTICLE ON PAGE 12-B.
New York Times: GOD VOWS DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH!! WOMEN, CHILDREN AND MINORITIES TO BE HARDEST HIT!!
Celeste, I’m sorry for the above. What you bring up is a serious problem, and I realize that it’s really importatant to you. I shouldn’t have detracted from it with my usual display of distaste for the U.N., the NYT, and questionable liberal intentions. You are more sincere than any of those. Please accept my apology.
Thanks, Woody. I appreciate that. The article is really, really worth reading, I promise.
I guess, a lot of us didn’t need a subscription to the New York Times, to do something to help women and children in places like Africa and Afghanistan.
So if you want to talk to a person who actually builds orphanages, constructs shelters, and brings fresh water to the women and children in the 3rd world, just visit your local Christian Church.
Pokey, there are a lot of wonderful people doing good things. However, clearly it is not yet enough.
If you read the article I think you’ll find that Kristof and WuDunn, who in a whole slew of ways have put their money and their discretionary time where their mouths are, so to speak, have something new to say on the issue that, with any luck, will motivate a lot more people, organizations and, while we’re at it, governments, to see that—-as Kristof says in the opening, women’s issues may not be so much the problem as they are the solution.
I’m all for energetically bashing the New York Times when they screw up and are self-righteous and irrelevant. There’s plenty of room for that.
However, why one would want to bash them—or any other news outlet— when they do something really good, is honestly beyond me.
What does that accomplish?
What does that accomplish?
It’s like the old saying about urinating while wearing a blue serge suit: it leaves you with a warm feeling and no one notices.
I love India. They’re women still know their place in society.
We’ll take your word for that, Randy, but don’t do it at work.
C: why one would want to bash them—or any other news outlet— when they do something really good
Invariably, “good causes” by liberal media are less about helping people and more about furthering a socialist, liberal, and one-world political agenda.
It’s like them being concerned about the homeless only when Republicans control Washington, and then that cause goes away. It’s like their concern about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan disappearing off the pages when a Democrat is in charge. It’s like their total lack of concern about social security problems that Bush raised but it becomes a concern when the Democrats can use that issue.
The “women’s issue” is more about politics. It pushes a U.N.,socialist, liberal, “gender-equity” agenda worldwide under the guise of concern for women…and, money for the liberal organizations are often at the root of this.
From the article:
Then, there’s more:
Besides money, it’s about control and social engineering.
Even if the concerns were sincere, we can’t save everyone in the world!
But, it doesn’t end there.
More money! More transfer of wealth! More of the money from taxpayers going to pay for liberal causes! And, the results will be pathetic and most of the money confiscated by corrupt governments.
Agggggggghhhhhhhhhh!
I propose that we respect women by dropping the use of terms like “a gentlemen’s agreement” and “right-hand man,†as there is no limit to the silliness of what liberals want…even, if the cause sounds worthy.
Next time, Celeste, don’t wonder.
Thoughtful thread, like the way you pulled together disparate sources, based on inherent integrity of the articles and the writers.
As for why Christian organizations aren’t such encouraged to do this work: some do, but in reality Christian converts in Muslim countries, even moderate ones like Egypt where they’re officially protected, can be subject to de facto skepticisim, social shunning and grassroots persecution from Muslims who believe their national identity and religion are intertwined. Coptic Christians who have long historical ties to Egypt’s history, Lebanese Christians and some others are more accepted as honoring their own family traditions. Even in India, Christian converts can be ostracized – though we all know about the work of Catholic Mother Theresa in Calcutta, she was careful to let her religion shine solely by example and deed, not evangelism; evangelists who try to mix conversion with charity can come under assault. In China only officially sanctioned religious groups can operate, and Christians are persecuted and jailed just for practicing their religion outside of government sanctions; many other countries are far more unsafe for evangelical Christians.
Many of the same countries which treat women most heinously also do the same with do-gooding Christians. All in all, a dicey way to often go compared to secular organizations. Especially “liberal” and apolitical ones like Doctors Sans Frontiers.
Thanks Woody for your persistent efforts to show us your ass…
Saves me time !!!
Pushing a “gender-equity” agenda under guise of “concern for women” ? That’s a pretty nefarious plot to hide one’s real motives ! I’m impressed that the stupidest man on the planet could see straight through it….
And that the usual suspects are carping against this post with the same old generic drivel is pretty damned nauseating….
I don’t wear blue serge.
Comment #13 is pretty ironic considering the source and his earlier comments.
“Gender equity” isn’t about equal rights for women but special rights for women. It’s like affirmative action, aks reverse discrimination. Thank goodness we saw through the Equal Rights Amendment and stopped the steamroller before it was too late.
Shorter Woody: Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant.
I apologize for the snark of that last comment.
Here, however, is the text of the ERA:
“Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification”
What in the text of that amendment confers “special rights” for women?
Woody sees a straightforward affirmation of equal rights for women as a “steamroller.” “Men” who think this way suffer from the inadquacey of a vital organ. Could be their brain…could be something much smaller. This is putrid stuff. It’s of a piece with his raging homophobia, the serial racism and even his inability to distinguish liberals from “Stalinists.”
As for “irony”, Woody – I wasn’t carping against the post. I thought it was excellent. What disgusts me is your persistence in degrading these threads – no matter how serious or non-partisan the topic – with your predictable bigoted nonsense. You’re trash and what you bring to this excellent blog is nothing but garbage.
reg, do you think that you add value or enlighten anyone on the subject of the post with you personal attacks? That’s all you ever have.
– – –
Randy, as we eventually learned from Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum, the ERA meant a lot more than its “simple wording” and was intended to be and would have been interpreted very broadly and beyond what normal Americans would accept. To say that “all it says is…” is not being honest about its ramifications.
There were plenty of women who opposed the ERA, including those on moral grounds, too.
But, we don’t have to debate it, as the amendment, despite an illegal extension of time to consider it by the Democrats, was rejected by America. It reminds me of the health care bill – try to ram it through before people really see what you intend. Time exposes the ruse.
You’ll have to be content to try to sneak in the objectives of the ERA gradually and under the cover of night, as the Democrats have done and are doing right now with the help of activist judges, left-wing “charities,” abortion providers, the left-wing media, the U.N., and homosexual activists. That’s a pretty sorry lot to think anything good could come from them.
Let’s get to the truth about the ERA.
The Debates About ERA
Phyllis Schlafly ? – ’nuff said. I have a great Phyllis Schlafly story – when I was about 16, Schlafly was featured in our local newspaper (The St. Louis Globe Democrat, edited by Pat Buchanan, no less) with some insane rant about “modern art” being a Communist Plot. No kidding ! She really believed that shit. (It hinged on Picasso’s relationship to the Spanish Communists, etc. etc. ad absurdum.) She claimed “modern art” was sapping the West of it’s cherished values, blah blah, and the Reds were behind it. I knew enough about art history, even at that relatively tender age, to know she was blowing smoke out of her butt and got a letter to the editor published in response to the Schlafly interview noting that she essentially shared Stalin’s views on “Good Art” vs. “Bad Art” – i.e. that modernist art was banned in the USSR, that abstract artists like Kandinksy were vilified, and that the preferred art of the Stalinists was “heroic” Realism celebrating “traditional values” embodied in fervent nationalism, celebration of “great leaders”, the prosaic focus on patriotism, hard work, etc. One of her aides responded that the Soviets were trying to destroy us by imposing degenerate “modern” and “abstract” art on their enemies while keeping all of the good, socially uplifting art for themselves. At an early age I learned, not just how crazy the Woodies of this world happen to be, but how easy they are to debunk. Also that debunking them doesn’t matter, because of course they’ll always persist and try to wear you out with their insane bullshit. It’s the halmark of bigotry and fanaticism – further proof of their inability to reason or engage in discourse beyond pushing close-minded, ignorant rants.
What Reg said abouit Phyllis Schlafly.
Again, Woody, you made the claim that the ERA was designed to confer special rights for women.
What in the language of the amendment indicates that?
A simple answer, which thus far, you have not answered.
Randy, if you don’t think that affirmative action for blakcs is a special right not available to white males, then you wouldn’t agree that similar matters with women are special rights. Maybe you’re correct. They are “special wrongs.”
One example that comes to mind is this nonsense that women are paid less than men simply on the basis of what they make with no consideration as to major factors such as college majors, field of work and related job competitiveness, commitment to an employer vs. kids, etc. The craziest notion, that I know you would like to see come back up, is “equal worth” which tosses out market forces for specialized skills.
I always expect reg to try to discredit someone with an issue unrelated to the subject, but I didn’t expect you to fall in line with him. That is not an argument. It’s a surrender flag.
Oh, and once again, the general language of the amendment does not outline the specific and broad applications of it. You have to go by what it would have done, not by what you want to claim that it simply says. Also, it would have granted new claims of rights by homosexuals, and, if you’re honest, you could see that.
This has been a great discussion of the article…
Woody shamelessy, childishly and narcissitically pisses on another thread.
reg, what did you contribute? Nothing. Nothing at all.
I gave my opinions and defended them and myself against your personal, as always, attacks.
Also, it would have granted new claims of rights by homosexuals, and, if you’re honest, you could see that.
Woody, that’s not a matter of fact, it’s a matter of opinion. I’m not being dishonest because I disagree with you.
There is nothing in the language of the legislation that provided special rights for anyone. Nothing.
Just like on the current health care bills, Republican attempts to include specific language to clarify what was or was not intended got stonewalled by the Democrats. They wanted the amendment to remain broad and for reasons that included homosexual rights.
bigot !
Woody – this is one of the most preposteerous efforts you’ve ever mounted – and that’s saying a lot. And don’t expect me to repond in detail to the notions of a crank like Phyllis Schlafly. She’s you in a dress. Total, unadulterated paranoia, bigotry and horseshit. Your derailing of this thread is the essence of childish, self-indulgent, ignorant trolling, with absolutely no respect the blog or the possibility of non-hysterical, informed discussion. You derailed the post with your insufferable prejudice and unhinged, recycled assertions.
Celeste–
Boy, are you easy to snow! In fact, Nicholas Kristof is an insufferably self-righteous hack who trolls for Pulitzers with a shamelessness notable even by the standards of the NYTimes. And don’t forget the unconscionable and characteristically shoddy way that Kristof libeled an entirely innocent man, Dr. Steven Hatfill (look it up).
They wanted the amendment to remain broad and for reasons that included homosexual rights.
Funny, but the word homosexual was not in the text of the amendment. Apparently that only exists in the fever swamp that resides between your ears.
Woody wouldn’t be his psychotic self if he passed up an opportunity to reveal his deep-seated fears about other men’s penises.