Half the Sky: How to Change the World

by Nicholas D. Kristof

‘Investment in girls’ education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world,’ Lawrence Summers wrote when he was chief economist of the World Bank. ‘The question is not whether countries can afford this investment, but whether countries can afford not to educate more girls.’

Some security experts noted that the countries that nurture terrorists are disproportionally those where women are marginalized.

Empowering girls, some in the military argued, would disempower terrorists.

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself. – ABRAHAM LINCOLN

even when a social problem is so vast as to be insoluble in its entirety, it’s still worth mitigating.

We believe that universities should make it a requirement that all graduates spend at least some time in the developing world, either by taking a ‘gap year’ or by studying abroad. If more Americans worked for a summer teaching English at a school like Mukhtar’s in Pakistan, or working at a hospital like HEAL Africa in Congo, our entire society would have a richer understanding of the world around us. And the rest of the world might also hold a more positive view of Americans.

The World Bank has estimated that for every one thousand girls who get one additional year of education, two fewer women will die in childbirth.

‘Close the gate!’ Edna shouted to the guard, blocking the car from leaving. Then Edna turned to the husband. ‘Forget about the payment,’ she said, and she pulled out the placenta right there in the backseat before opening the gate and allowing him to go.

One cannot rear young people in such ways that half of them think themselves superior by biology, without dulling ambition and devaluing accomplishment.

‘The international community should focus on education. On behalf of the women and children of Afghanistan, I beg you! If we are to overcome terrorism and violence, we need education. That is the only way we can win.’

‘Now women earn money and so their husbands respect them more,’ said Zohra Bibi, a neighbor of Saima who used Kashf loans to buy young calves that she raises and sells when they are grown. ‘If my husband starts to hit me, I tell him to lay off or next year I won’t get a new loan. And then he sits down and is quiet.’

absolutely anybody can join them in arranging microloans to needy women like Saima – by going to a Web site, www.kiva.org. Kiva is the brainchild of a young tech-savvy American couple, Matt and Jessica Flannery, who visited Uganda and saw the power of microfinance there. They knew that Americans would like to lend if only they knew the recipient, so Matt and Jessica thought: Why can’t a Web site make the connection directly? That’s when they started Kiva. If you go to the Kiva Web site, you see people all over the world who want to borrow to finance small businesses. Those would-be borrowers are vetted by a local on-the-ground microfinance organization.