Half the Sky

by Nicholas D. Kristof

Social psychologists argue that all this reflects the way our consciences and ethical systems are based on individual stories and are distinct from the parts of our brains concerned with logic and rationality. Indeed, when subjects in experiments are first asked to solve math problems, thus putting in play the parts of the brain that govern logic, afterward they are less generous to the needy.

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.

Humans are the only mammals that need assistance in birth,

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.

There’s a strong correlation between countries where women are marginalized and countries with high maternal mortality.

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

“Maternal deaths in developing countries are often the ultimate tragic outcome of the cumulative denial of women’s human rights,” noted the journal Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology. “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.”

maternal health does involve sex and sexuality; it is bloody and messy; and I think many men (not all, of course) have a visceral antipathy for dealing with it.

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. If that $9 billion managed to save three quarters of the mothers who are now dying, that would mean that 402,000 women would be saved annually,

“I was not consulted,” Edna says. “I was caught, held down, and it was done. My mother thought it was the right thing to do. My father was out of town. When he came back and heard, that was the only time I ever saw him with tears in his eyes. And that encouraged me, because if he thought it was wrong, then that meant a lot.”

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. Whatever one thinks of abortion, it’s tragic that up to 40 percent of all pregnancies globally are unplanned or unwanted—and that almost half of those result in induced abortions.

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

All told, some 25 percent of AIDS care worldwide is provided by church-related groups.

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.

The Index of Global Philanthropy calculates that U.S. religious organizations give $5.4 billion annually to developing countries, more than twice as much as is given by U.S. foundations.

Brooks does find, however, that while liberals are less generous with their own money, they are more likely to favor government funding of humanitarian causes.

“Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe.”

In short, often we blame a region’s religion when the oppresion instead may be rooted in its culture.

When Muhammad introduced Islam in the seventh century, it was a step forward for women. Islamic law banned the previously common practice of female infanticide, and it limited polygamy to four wives who were supposed to be treated equally. Muslim women routinely owned property, with rights protected by the law, while women in European countries often did not have the equivalent property rights.

if the Koran originally was progressive, then it should not be allowed to become an apologia for backwardness.

“You think we’re victims, because we cover our hair and wear modest clothing. But we think that it’s Western women who are repressed, because they have to show their bodies—even go through surgery to change their bodies—to please men.”

Women can’t testify fully in court, and yet women can be judges presiding over the court.

as long as smart, bold women like Ellaha disproportionately end up in prison, or in coffins, in some Muslim nations, then those countries are undermining their own hopes for development.

Countries that repress women also tend to be backward economically, adding to the frustrations that nurture terrorism.

“You educate a boy, and you’re educating an individual,” Greg says, quoting an African proverb. “You educate a girl, and you’re educating an entire village.”

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.

“Education is the key issue for overcoming poverty, for overcoming war,” Sakena says. “If people are educated, then women will not be abused or tortured. They will also stand up and say, ‘My child should not be married so young.’”

One study in India found that 12 percent of all schools were closed at any time because teachers had not gone to work that day.

One of the most cost-effective ways to increase school attendance is to deworm students.

“The average American spends fifty dollars a year to deworm a dog; in Africa, you can deworm a child for fifty cents,”

Another cost-effective way of getting more girls to attend high school may be to help them manage menstruation.

Another tantalizingly simple way to boost girls’ education is to iodize salt.

A study in Ecuador suggests that iodine deficiency typically shaves ten to fifteen points off a child’s IQ.

Still another smart strategy to expand girls’ education is bribery.

About one quarter of Mexican families are served in some way by Oportunidades, and it is one of the most admired antipoverty programs in the world. The poor get cash grants in exchange for keeping children in school, getting them immunized, taking them to clinics for checkups, and attending health education lectures. Grants range from $10 per month for a child in the third grade to $66 for a girl in high school (grants are highest for high school girls because their dropout rates are highest). The payments are made directly by the central government, to reduce local corruption, and to mothers rather than fathers. That’s because research has shown that mothers are more likely to use cash for the children’s benefit, and because the payments elevate the status of the mothers within the household.

While empowering women is critical to overcoming poverty, it represents a field of aid work that is particularly challenging in that it involves tinkering with the culture, religion, and family relations of a society that we often don’t fully understand.

Those who harvest the most pumpkins are the ones who lack the pots to cook them. In other words, the brightest children are often born into families that lack the means to educate them.

Particularly in southern Africa, some teachers trade good grades for sex: Half of Tanzanian women, and nearly half of Ugandan women, say they were abused by male teachers, and one third of reported rapes of South African girls under the age of fifteen are by teachers.

“A woman should know her limits, and if not then it’s her husband’s right to beat her,” Sharifa said. “But if a woman earns more than her husband, it’s difficult for him to discipline her.”

Microfinance has done more to bolster the status of women, and to protect them from abuse, than any laws could accomplish. Capitalism, it turns out, can achieve what charity and good intentions sometimes cannot.

A remarkable study by an American development economist, Edward Miguel, found that in Tanzania, extreme rainfall patterns—either droughts or flooding—are accompanied by a doubling in the numbers of unproductive old women killed for witchcraft, compared to normal years (other murders do not increase, only those of “witches”).

Several studies suggest that when women gain control over spending, less family money is devoted to instant gratification and more for education and starting small businesses.

it appears that the poorest families in the world typically spend approximately ten times as much (20 percent of their income on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitutes, candy, sugary drinks, and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children.

Women now own just 1 percent of the world’s titled land, according to the UN. That has to change.

You couldn’t be more right. Women do work better. Banks were the first to see that and hired more women, and now everybody does. In homes, too, women manage affairs better than men. In the Botswanan civil service, women are taking over. Half of the government sector is now women. The governor of the central bank, the attorney general, the chief of protocol, the director of public prosecution—they are all women…. Women perform better in Africa, much better. We see that in Botswana. And their profiles are different. Deferred consumption is higher among girls, and they buy durables and have higher savings rates. Men are more consumption oriented.

One rationale for seeking more female politicians is that women supposedly excel in empathy and forging consensus and thus may make, on average, more peaceful and conciliatory leaders than men. Yet we don’t see much sign that women presidents or prime ministers have performed better, or more peacefully, than men in modern times.

On the other hand, the conventional wisdom in development circles is that women officeholders do make a difference at the local level, as mayors or school board members, where they often seem more attentive to the needs of women and children.

Even if they do better than men at providing services, they initially are judged more harshly.

maternal mortality in the United States declined significantly only once women gained the right to vote: When women had a political voice, their lives also became a higher priority.

opponents of women’s political participation have often made the argument that if women get involved in outside activities, then children will suffer. In fact, the evidence from our own history is that women’s political participation has proved to be of vast, life-saving benefit to America’s children.