Half the Sky

by Nicholas D. Kristof

The U.S. State Department has estimated that between 600,000 and 800,000 people

are trafficked across international borders each year, 80 percent of them women and girls, mostly for sexual exploitation. Since Meena didn’t cross a border, she wasn’t trafficked in the traditional sense.

A third reason for the worsening situation is AIDS. Being sold to a brothel was always a hideous fate, but not usually a death sentence. Now it often is. And because of the fear of AIDS, customers prefer younger girls

India will not be free,

Until its women are free. What about the girls in this country? If girls are insulted and abused and enslaved in this country, Put your hand on your heart and ask, Is this country truly independent?

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

“After 9/11, we’ve tightened things up here. And

we’re also looking for smuggled or pirated goods. If we find them, we’ll confiscate them.” “What about trafficked girls?” Nick asked. “Are you keeping an eye out for them? There must be a lot.” “Oh, a lot. But we don’t worry about them. There’s nothing you can do about them.”

intelligence officer to look for pirated goods because it knew that the United States cares about intellectual property. When India feels that the West cares as much about slavery as it does about pirated DVDs, it will dispatch people to the borders to stop traffickers.

“What are you doing, son?” the man asks. “You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.” The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and

threw it into the ocean. “It sure made a difference to that one,” he said.

World Health Organization found that in most countries, between 30 percent and 60 percent of women had experienced physical or sexual violence by a husband or boyfriend.

widespread: 21 percent of Ghanaian women reported in one survey that their sexual initiation was by rape; 17 percent of Nigerian women said that they had endured rape or attempted rape by the age of nineteen; and 21 percent of South African women reported that they had been raped by the age of fifteen.

“If someone steals a goat, the people would beat him up.” But kidnapping a girl is okay?

why is it that women part of the human race are still less then men thoughs who say other wise need only see that culturally in most parts of the world this is okay. you sell an animal and it does not get raped you sell a women and she gets raped and soon dies of disease the animal has a better chance to live really?

As for wife beating, one survey found support for it from 62 percent of Indian village women themselves. And no group systematically abuses young women more cruelly than mothers-in-law, who serve as household matriarchs in much of the world and take charge of disciplining the younger women.

Of all the things that people do in the name of God, killing a girl because she doesn’t bleed on her wedding night is among the most cruel.

Not only does the Bible advocate stoning girls to death when they fail to bleed on their wedding sheets, but Solon, the great lawgiver of ancient Athens, prescribed that no Athenian could be sold into slavery save a

woman who lost her virginity before marriage. In China, a neo-Confucian saying from the Song Dynasty declares: “For a woman to starve to death is a small matter, but for her to lose her chastity is a calamity.”

In 2008, the United Nations formally declared rape a “weapon of war,”

probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.

Eleven percent of the world’s inhabitants live in sub-Saharan Africa,

and they suffer 24 percent of the world’s disease burden—which is addressed with less than 1 percent of the world’s health care spending.

Unsafe abortions cause the deaths of seventy thousand women annually and cause serious injuries to another 5 million. The economic cost of caring for those 5 million women is estimated to be $750 million annually.

In another experiment, people were asked to donate to a $300,000 fund to fight cancer. One group was told that the money would be used to save the life of one child, while another group was told it would save the lives of eight children. People contributed almost twice as much to save one child as to save eight.

babies. A South African study found that giving girls a $6 uniform every eighteen months increased the chance that they would stay in school and consequently significantly reduced the number of pregnancies they experienced.

doctors and nurses often don’t show up for work, particularly in rural clinics. In one careful study

across six countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, on any one day 39 percent of doctors were absent from clinics when they were supposed to be on duty.

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

increased. During World War I, more American women died in childbirth than American men died in war.

1920s to the 1940s in the United States, maternal mortality rates

plunged—apparently because the same society that was giving women the right to vote also found the political will to di...

When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were “supposed” to suffer.

Suppose that the estimate of $9 billion per year is correct. It pales beside the $40 billion that the world spends annually on pet food, but it’s still a great deal of money.

“We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the People’s Republic of China.” In the thirty-two counties in China where UNFPA operates pilot programs, it has reduced abortion rates by 40 percent, to a rate lower than that in the United States.

In short, since then, UNFPA has prevented nearly 10 million abortions in China. That’s a record far better than that of any pro-life organization.

happen. One of the scandals of the early twenty-first century is that 122 million women around the world want contraception and can’t get it.

40 percent of all pregnancies globally are unplanned or unwanted—and

It appears that the most effective contraceptive is education for girls, although birth control supplies are obviously needed as well.

many seeds as possible, without doing much to nurture them afterward. Given biological differences,

this is not true because evalutionist have proved that is the difference between us and other mamals why we partner up because its required for human survival. that men also have an awarness to provide for their off spring

In any case, for women the lethal risk factor is often not promiscuity but marriage. Routinely in Africa and Asia, women stay safe until they marry, and then they contract AIDS from their husbands.

World Economic Forum according to the status of women, 10 of the bottom 12 were majority Muslim.

Jail is sometimes the safest place for a bold Afghan woman.

“Pasha,” or, as in Iran, tell them that they have a golden penis,* without reducing their need to learn and do….

state by state, women obtained the right to vote. He found that when women gained the vote, the politicians in that state scrambled to win favor from women voters by allocating more funds to child health care; this did not happen in states where women remained unable to vote.

“Child mortality declined by 8–15 percent with the enactment of suffrage laws…. Nationwide, these reductions translate into roughly 20,000 averted child deaths each year.”

stunning: The mortality rate for children aged one to four plummeted 72 percent between 1900 and 1930,

Chinese girls in the early twentieth century sometimes didn’t even get real names, just the equivalent of “No. 2

sister” or “No. 4 sister.” Or, perhaps even less dignified, girls might be named Laidi or Yindi or Zhaodi, all variations of “Bring a younger brother.”

men. In the late 1920s, street thugs would sometimes seize a woman with short hair and pull out all of her hair or even cut off her breasts. If you want to look like a man, they said, this will do it.

China is an important model because it was precisely its emancipation of girls that preceded and enabled its economic takeoff.