'Half the Sky' a Horrendous, Yet Uplifting Account of Women's Struggles and Triumphs

The fight for equality in the Third World is nothing like the fight for equality in America. Here it is about equal pay or access to birth control or sexual harassment. In the Third World, it is about nothing less than the fight for your right to live.

The first chapter opens with a horrifying account of a girl sold into prostitution who managed to escape, only to be sold into slavery a second time. Yet she escapes again, and now runs a prosperous little shop near the border.

Her winning smile and ebullience are not dimmed by her trials, as she coaxes customers to buy her shirts and hats, costume jewelry, notebooks, pens, and small toys.

Or take the case of the Pakistani girl who was raped by men from a higher caste. They expected her to go home and kill herself, which seemed to be the custom in her village. However, she pressed for damages.

The case came to the attention of then-President Pervez Musharraf, who sent her $8,300 in compensation. She did not commit suicide and she did not shut up, either. She did, however, start a school with the settlement money. This one girl began to empower other children with education and other options in their lives besides just being victims.

She embarrassed Musharraf with the attention she brought to the subject of rape. He did not appreciate her gadfly role, needless to say. But Musharraf is gone, and the school survives.

Statistics are piled on statistics to show that millions of women are missing, primarily in Asia where abortions and infanticides are skewed in favor of boy babies.

Ironically, it is primarily women who work in the factories that have powered the Chinese economic revolution. Their little fingers and willingness to work hard are China's best resource.

How much of the world could be redeemed from poverty if only the women were safe, educated, and empowered to take their places in the culture and marketplaces of their hometowns.

Where bombs fail to remove oppression, the liberation of women can and will succeed.

"Half the Sky" by Nicholas D. Kristof, Knopf, Sept. 2009, 320 pages.

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