The Guardian's Ed Pilkington interviews the Pulitzer Prize winning team, Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof, behind the American bestseller 'Half the Sky', which aims to expose the systematic oppression of women all over the world, referred to the authors as 'gendercide'.
"When you hear that 60 to 100 million females are missing in the current population," says WuDunn, "And then you compare the slave trade at its peek in the 1780s, when there were 80,000 slaves transported from Africa to the New World, and you see there are now 10 times that amount of women trafficked across international borders, so you start to think you are talking about comparable weight."
The couple also have very clear views on why there is so little awareness of the global oppression of women through trafficking and human rights abuses, and they raise some issues that are very close to our hearts here at WVON.
"It's partly that our definition of what constitutes news is a legacy of the perspective of middle-aged men," says Kristof. "It may well be that one major reason why high-school girls drop out of school around the world is that they have trouble managing menstruation, and probably one reason nobody has cottoned on to this is that people who run aid organisations and write about it have never menstruated."
WVON has covered 'Half the Sky' before, when it is given a critical (in every sense) review by Germaine Greer, (we've also featured a TED video of WuDunn, here) but Greer's article is actually best read in tandem with this interview, as it explains many of the reasons why the book has been written in the way it has, particularly in terms of the writers' decision to give individual case studies instead of citing large scale statistics, and their reasons for including so many examples of localised fights and campaigns for women's rights.
"The research stresses the importance of the positive," says Kristof. "We followed research in terms of writing in a way that would engage people, and Half the Sky was a kind of experiment in trying to use these approaches to reach a broader audience. From that regard, I think it worked remarkably."
And even without reading it yet, I think he might be right. The book has sold over 300,000 copies, there's a documentary in preparation, and even a video game for young people. And readers write in every day with examples of the efforts they have made to run local campaigns, raise money and raise awareness since reading the book. I agree wholeheartedly with the authors that the global failure to treat women as human beings is one of the greatest challenges left on the planet, and one that I think links with so many other pertinent contemporary issues, including the abuse of the environment and the impacts of global capitalism. You can find out more about the book and how to get involved in helping to hold up half the sky, here.
