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Sunday, September 4, 2011

[ALOCHONA] Book: "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide"





Book: "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide"
by Nicholas D. Kristof,Sheryl WuDunn

CNN & Newsweek journalist Fareed Zakaria recommended this book in this Sunday's GPS. I found the discussion with the authors fascinating. So I took a look. I also felt proud that Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and BRAC took a lead in discovering and practicing the simple advantages of investing in women: "Give money to a man, and he would spend them in bars, women, guns and games; give money to a woman, and she would spend them on children, home, family and set up a small business, often employing the husband"!!

The story is true in country after country in Asia and Africa. What I find sad is that while societies are catching up in this transformation, the religious fundamentalists of all faiths, particularly Islam, are holding on to the age-old prejudices. May they be shrugged aside.The book encourages bottom-up development by empowering and investing in women.




Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Vintage)

Book Description

Series: Vintage | Publication Date: June 1, 2010
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women's potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it's also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.


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[Disclaimer: ALOCHONA Management is not liable for information contained in this message. The author takes full responsibility.]
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