Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Edna Adan has achieved many firsts for Somaliland, including first nurse midwife, funder of the first hospital, first first-lady, first woman to drive, first woman to go to school in Britain, and the first female Foreign Minister of Somaliland from 2003 to 2006. She grew up in Hargeisa, a poor town in Somaliland. She recalls how “I was of a generation that had no schools for girls…It was considered undesirable to teach a girl to read and write” (123). Edna defied her village by learning how to read and write, partly because her family was considered elite (her father was a doctor). Despite her family’s status, Edna still underwent female circumcision. Her father was deeply opposed to the process, whereas her mother considered it the right thing to do. Her father’s opposition fueled Edna’s belief that it was wrong, sparking her lifelong battle to end female circumcision. Using her own savings as well as donations from Americans, Edna built the first hospital in Somaliland.

Geeta Gosh’s story helps illustrates how the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, or DMSC, failed to prevent the trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation of underage girls. Geeta was from a poor village in Bangladesh. At the age of 11, she fled from abusive parents. A friend’s supposed aunt offered to help her. The aunt turned out to be a brothel owner at Sonagachi, and Geeta was forced into sex work. Like Meena and Rath, Geeta was beaten and threatened with death to make her more obedient. Geeta was also never paid, which also contradicts claims made by the DMSC in which all the women at Sonagachi were paid. Kristof actually toured Sonagachi and saw the underage girls with his own eyes.

As principal of the Overlake School, a private school, in Redmond, Washington, Frank Grijalva helped his students sponsor a school in Cambodia. Through this sponsorship, Grijalva hoped his students would see that they lived in a privileged community and “‘needed to be a bigger, more positive force in the world’” (17). The authors use this example to highlight the mixed record of aid projects. The students at Overlake School improved the lives of some Cambodian students, but the project also made mistakes because of insufficient understanding of the cultural context. The project likely did more for the American students in that it inspired and educated them about the plight of people outside the US.

A gynecologist by training, Catherine Hamlin runs the Addis Addaba Fistula Hospital. In 1959, she moved with her late husband from Australia to Ethiopia, where both worked in obstetrics-gynecology. They’d never seen a case of fistula before moving to Ethiopia. Catherine and her husband founded the hospital to help women with fistulas. She has presided over thousands of fistula surgeries and trained numerous doctors.

The authors describe Meena Hasina as “a lovely, dark skinned Indian woman in her thirties with warm, crinkly eyes and a stud in her left nostril” (3). She’s an Indian Muslim from a poor family who lived on the border of Nepal and India. When she was eight or nine years old, she was kidnapped and sold to a member of the Nutt, a low-caste tribe in India that controls many brothels and other criminal activities. She was forced into the traffickers’ cycle when she turned 12, just a few months before her first period. As is common, a woman ran the brothel. Meena gave birth to two children, Naina and Vivek. Initially, she was forced to abandon her children to escape the brothel. However, after much bravery on the part of both Meena and her children as well as help from Apne Aap, they were reunited outside the brothel. The authors initially considered sex work something that “women may turn to opportunistically or out of economic desperation” (9). Meena’s story, however, showed them how it can be a form of enslavement.

Mukhtar grew up in a poor village in southern Punjab, Pakistan. Like many other women in Half the Sky, she didn’t know her actual age and was unable to attend school. When she was a teen, her younger brother, Shakur, was kidnapped and raped by members of the Mastoi, a higher-status clan. To cover up their crime, the men claimed that Shakur had sex with a Mastoi girl, leading to a village tribal assembly. Mukhtar attended the assembly on behalf of her family to offer their apologies. To punish Mukhtar’s family, she was gang-raped. Once a woman is humiliated like this, the only recourse for her under Pakistani cultural tradition is death by suicide. Mukhtar’s parents refused to allow their daughter to end her life. A local Muslim leader even spoke up for her, denouncing her rape.

Mukhtar went to the police and reported her rape as a crime; something revolutionary for an impoverished girl like her. The police apprehended her rapists, and the president of Pakistan sent her money, which Mukhtar used to invest in schools. Initially, she faced a number of hurdles, including the police stealing from her and a falling-out with the Pakistani president that put her life in danger (the Pakistani president was unhappy that her rape was causing bad publicity for Pakistan). Eventually, Mukhtar expanded to several schools and a women’s college. In addition, she created the Mukhtar Mai Women’s Welfare Organization, “which operates a twenty-four-hour hotline for battered women, a free legal clinic, a public library, and a shelter for victims of violence” (75).

Dai Manju was from an impoverished family that lived in the Dabie Mountains of central China. The family didn’t have electricity or running water and could afford to eat meat only once a year, during the Chinese New Year. Initially, Dai’s parents, both of whom were elementary school dropouts, didn’t consider education important for Dai because they thought she’d spend her days in the fields. They prioritized the purchase of practical household items, like rice, rather than paying the $13 school fees and wanted Dai to drop out of school once she reached the eighth grade. Despite being unable to afford school supplies, however, Dai was the star pupil at her school. She deeply preferred to continue her education rather than drop out. After the authors wrote an article about Dai, a reader wired $10,000 to pay her tuition through his bank. (He intended the amount to be $100, but the bank made up the difference since it was their mistake). The principal at the school used the money to pay for the children’s education, including Dai’s, and to build a new school.

Dai thrived in school, even completing a degree in accounting. Her ability to continue her education was life-changing for her and her family, improving even their socioeconomic status.

The authors describe Harper McConnell, who grew up in Michigan and Kansas, as looking “as if she could be on an American university campus. Yet here she is in war-torn Congo, speaking excellent Swahili and bantering with her new friends who grew up in the Congolese bush” (88). Harper traveled to the Congo with the intention of giving back to people who truly needed the help after she completed her college degree. She did this through an exchange program that her church had with a hospital in the Congo. Harper established several programs to help women and girls staying at the hospital awaiting surgery and encouraged other Americans to donate either time or money to the hospital. The authors use Harper’s story to show how Americans can get involved in grassroots organizations doing the groundwork to address gender inequality.

One of two girls whom the authors purchased from brothels in Cambodia (the other being Srey Neth), Momm was “a frail girl with oversized eyes who had been pimped for five years and seemed near to cracking from the strain. One moment Momm would laugh and tell jokes, and the next she would dissolve into sobs and rage, but she pleaded to be purchased, freed, and taken back to her home” (38).

The authors purchased Momm from the brothel owners for $203 and took her back to her home. As they got closer to it, Momm became increasingly anxious about what her family would think. Momm had a happy family reunion. Her family decided that she would help sell meat in a market stall. Kristof left money to help finance the project. American Assistance for Cambodia agreed to help Momm with her transition. Momm initially seemed to be doing well but then voluntarily returned to the brothel. Like many girls, Momm became addicted to methamphetamines during her time at the brothel (owners gave the girls meth to keep them compliant). She wanted to return to the brothel to get her supply of meth. Once she did, she wanted to come back home. American Assistance for Cambodia helped her return home again twice, but each time she went back to the brothel.

When Kristof saw her a year later at the brothel, she cried and begged for his forgiveness. Kristof recounts her words: “‘I never lie to people, but I lied to you,’ she said forlornly. ‘I said I would not come back, and I did. I didn’t want to return, but I did’” (39). Momm almost became an overseer of young girls, but a crackdown on the brothel prevented this fate. She eventually married one of her customers, a policeman. Her story illustrates how challenging it can be to keep girls from returning to brothels.

Despite being a Dalit, against the odds, Usha Narayane helped empower her community, especially the women. Both her parents were unusually well-educated for her caste. They were determined that their children get an education to help them leave Kasturba Nagar. All five of their children, including Usha, graduated from college, an incredible feat in the slum. Akku Yadav, a gangster who terrorized her community, usually left her family alone because they were highly educated, and he worried that their complaints could represent real threats to his power. This all changed after Usha filed a complaint against him. The other Dalits in the slum united around Usha after Akku Yadav threatened to rape her, throw acid in her face, and then murder her. Police officers arrested him for his own protection. At his hearing, women from Kasturba Nagar stabbed him to death. Usha likely orchestrated this event. Despite continued threats of retaliation from Akku Yadav’s gang, Usha became a community organizer for the Dalits.

One of two girls that the authors purchased from brothels in Cambodia (the other being Srey Momm), Neth was “very pretty, short, and light-skinned. She looked fourteen or fifteen, but she thought she was older than that; she had no idea of her actual birth date” (35). Kristof interviewed her. Originally, she thought Kristof was a customer. She’d been in the brothel only about a month and was terrified by the idea that Kristof would be her first foreign customer. She eventually calmed down and told Kristof her story. She was sold to the brothel by a female cousin who told their family she was taking Neth to sell fruit in Poipet. A doctor confirmed that Neth was still a virgin because her hymen was intact. The brothel auctioned her virginity to a Thai casino manager, who later died from AIDS. Neth reiterated to Kristof that she couldn’t escape because she was closely watched, nor could she go to the police because they were corrupt.

Kristof offered to buy Neth from the brothel. She immediately agreed. Kristof purchased her for $150. The authors took her back home and left her money to start her own grocery store. American Assistance for Cambodia helped watch over Neth. Initially, the store did well since it was the only one in the village. Villagers soon began to open shops, however, after seeing Neth’s shop prosper. In addition, Neth’s family often took goods from her store without paying for them. Her store eventually collapsed.

The American Assistance for Cambodia helped Neth study hairdressing. However, she began to feel ill; she had recurring fevers and headaches. She visited a clinic, where she tested positive for HIV. Neth considered this a death sentence. During this time, a young man began courting her. They eventually married, and Neth became pregnant. She didn’t tell her husband that she was HIV positive or that she was a former sex worker, fearing that he’d leave her. Her husband was the first person who she believed truly loved her. Before giving birth, Neth agreed to be tested again. The test, which was more modern and reliable than the first, came back negative. Once Neth knew she didn’t have AIDS, her health dramatically improved (she may have been sick previously from tuberculosis, exhaustion, or parasites). She gave birth to a healthy son and finished up her final classes in hairdressing. Like Momm’s story, Neth’s story illustrates the complexity and uncertainty of rescuing girls from brothels.

Kristof and WuDunn introduce Srey Rath in the Introduction, describing her as a “self-confident Cambodian teen whose black hair tumbles over a round, light brown face” (xi). Rath is trusting, optimistic, and attractive; characteristics that the authors describe as dangerous for a teen from rural Cambodia since they make her more susceptible to human trafficking.

Traffickers tricked Rath, like many teens from rural areas, into commercial sex work. Initially, she intended to go to Thailand for a dishwashing job to support her family. However, the job agent sold her and several friends to a brothel in Malaysia. The brothel boss drugged Rath to keep her compliant. She eventually escaped but served a year in prison under Malaysia’s anti-immigration laws and then wound up in another brothel in Thailand because of a corrupt police officer. Although Rath eventually escaped and returned home to Cambodia, her story shows “the brutality inflicted routinely on women and girls in much of the world, a malignancy that is slowing gaining recognition as one of the paramount human rights problems of this century” (xiii).

After attending medical school at Columbia University, Allan Rosenfield joined the air force in South Korea, where he later volunteered at a local hospital on the weekends. There, he saw how “rural Korean women were suffering horrendous childbirth injuries unimaginable in the United States” (103). This experience spurred a deep interest in helping rural women in the Global South. He combined public health with practical medicine “to make it safe for women to have babies” (105). In 1999, he launched an organization called Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD). He firmly believed that maternal death was a human rights concern. He died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2008.

From a wealthy and liberal family in Pakistan, Roshaneh Zafar attended college in the US, where she studied developmental economics. Roshaneh started her career at the World Bank but quickly saw how the development money never made it to the villages. To fix this in Pakistan, she founded Kashf. Initially, Kashf was unsuccessful. Because of Pakistan’s conservative culture, women were reluctant to take money from strangers. She eventually found several women who were willing to borrow. It took several years, but Roshaneh finally had a successful business model. Now, nearly 100% of its loans are repaid in full by either the borrower or members of the group. Roshaneh was selected as an Ashoka Fellow, which helped her broaden her network and training.

Growing up in Iraq, Zainab Salbi came from a family that was close to Saddam Hussein. While she was a university student, her mother unexpectedly sent her to the US to marry an Iraqi man. (Zainab later learned it was because Saddam wanted to make her one of his mistresses.) The man raped her. She left the marriage and resolved never to speak of her association with Saddam. Zainab met and married a Palestinian doctoral student named Amjad. After reading about the rape of Bosnian women by Serbian soldiers in a Time magazine article, Zainab started Women for Women in Bosnia, with support from a Unitarian church. While the first few years were financially tough, the group turned into Women for Women International. The organization now works with women who survived war all over the world. After hearing a deeply personal story from a Congolese rape survivor, Zainab decided to tell her family about her own rape and tell the world that she knew Saddam.