Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

In these two chapters, Kristof and WuDunn examine gender-based violence, particularly in the forms of rape, honor rape, and honor killings. Among the unsettling points in this section is that “violence against women is […] constantly mutating into new forms” (62). Thus, the problem for women is not individual rapists or gangsters but an entire culture of misogyny and sexism.

In Chapter 4, Woinshet’s community didn’t side with her as the survivor of rape. Instead, they sided with Aberew, her rapist, since he followed traditional Ethiopian cultural practices. The community members were more upset at Woinshet for breaking these norms by reporting her rape and going to court to prosecute Aberew. Chapter 5 describes how a young Kurdish girl named Du’a Aswad was killed because she supposedly dishonored her family by hanging out with a boy at night (the family didn’t know whether the two had sex). Despite honor killings being illegal in Iraqi Kurdistan, the security officers present at the scene, didn’t intervene on her behalf. More than 1,000 men participated in Du’a’s murder. These two examples highlight how attitudes toward women as less than human are embedded within cultures.

The authors note that while “men are often more brutal to women” (67), women often commit gender-based violence against other women. Women typically manage brothels and routinely beat women and girls into compliance. In addition, reports and testimonials reveal that women fighters helped lure women to rape sites in countries including Sierra Leone, Iraq, Haiti, and Rwanda—and then held the woman down as male fighters raped them. These examples all show how women, like men, “absorb and transmit misogynistic values” (69).

Throughout the book, Kristof and WuDunn note that fighting back against oppression is incredibly dangerous for women. A particularly poignant example is Mukhtar Mai’s story. She routinely called on the Pakistani government to invest more in women’s rights. President Musharraf, although initially sympathetic to Mukhtar’s rape, became embarrassed by her public comments. He had the intelligence services follow her, release the men convicted of her rape, blacklist her from leaving the country, and try to accompany her to the US to regulate her public comments. One official even said: “You have betrayed your country and helped our enemies…You have shamed Pakistan before the world” (73). At one point, President Musharaff planned to kill Mukhtar and make it look like a mugging. Despite the dangers, Mukhtar refused to stop fighting for women. The Musharaff government eventually collapsed, and the Pakistani intelligence agencies left her alone.

In addition, the authors begin to focus on how people living in the Global North, especially Americans, can get involved in fighting for gender equality. The authors’ first recommendation is for Americans “to get out and see the world” (88) because they believe that to effectively solve an issue, people must truly understand it, and this can be done only by viewing the issue firsthand. They suggest that the US university system fails its students by not enabling them to understand domestic and international poverty. The authors cite Harper McConnell as a strong example of an American who is helping to tackle gender inequality by living in and directly helping the impacted community. They also recommend that people donate to grassroots organizations if they’re unable to visit these communities themselves. In the Appendix, they provide a list of such organizations.