Half the Sky

by Thomas Dollar

It’s hard to read through feminist blogs without coming upon the term intersectionality.  Intersectionality is the idea that gender, race, class, sexual orientation and other factors intersect to create “matrices of oppression.”  Within academia, it’s a revolutionary movement away from a feminism that centered solely on the experiences of privileged, heterosexual, white women.  (Or as Dr. Paul Farmer would put it, the recognition “all oppression is not created equal.”)  To anyone who has ever spent two minutes outside academia, it’s fairly obvious.  But so what?  What use is it to identify and name a problem unless it’s to come up with a solution?  Consciousness raising is all well and good, but awareness without action is like faith without works.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a new book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, tells the stories of women who have been dealt the worst intersectional hand.  They are poor women of color, living in highly patriarchal, traditional societies in the developing world, and their stories tell of kidnapping and sex trafficking, “honor” killings, female genital mutilation, and spousal beatings and rape.  But what makes “Half the Sky” a must-read is not just the horrific stories (though it is important for world to be made aware), but its specific instances of women working to effect real, meaningful change.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are outraged by the treatment of women and girls around the globe, and have turned this outrage into a movement.  The authors argue that women’s empowerment is not just a boutique issue, but is fundamental to promoting international development and global security.  They link religious terrorism and violent extremism to the oppression of women, and claim that societies that hold women back hinder their own economic growth.  They call on Americans to demand that our foreign policy reflect these values.  (To her credit, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a strong advocate for global women’s rights in the past year—and received too little domestic press for it.)

Some of the recommendations in “Half the Sky” are controversial among feminist readers.  Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn excoriate the South Asian sex industry, and argue that brothels there are inherently oppressive and should be eradicated—regardless of what we think of sex work in the West.  Ending sex trafficking is a non-partisan issue, and sex-positive feminists should not be afraid to work with Evangelical Christians on this common goal.  (The authors do acknowledge that reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right.)

“Half the Sky” has also been criticized for being patronizing and culturally imperialist.  It challenges orthodoxies, and promotes factory jobs as an opportunity for women to escape poverty. Courtney Martin of Feministing called the book not “a feminist analysis of the systemic injustices that intersect in these women’s and girls’ lives… It’s a book that prizes pragmatism over an analysis of power, simple stories over complex narratives, and motivating an ‘everywoman’ reader over pointing out hypocrisies, inconsistencies, and challenges of Western-based activism for global uplift.”

This is a fair characterization, but the book’s pragmatism should be to its credit, not its detriment.  Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are not afraid to say that many cultures around the world are hostile to the rights of women.  (And all societies are not equal in this respect.)  Westerners, in a position of power and privilege, have a moral obligation to work to correct injustice.  The authors are not naïve about the limits of foreign activism, and point out several instances in which Western “meddling” has made a situation worse.  (Campaigns against FGM have often led to an increased rate of cutting.)  But results should speak for themselves.  The book is based on the belief that it is better to make real, incremental improvements in women’s lives than to analyze power structures or devise theories that have no practical applications.  Being on the ground in Sierra Leone for a year showed me the value of a results-based approach—and the limits of Theory.

Whatever you think of Western-based activism, I recommend that Equal Writes readers read “Half the Sky.”  Those of you in Princeton will also have the opportunity to meet the authors this week: Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn will be speaking at Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall on Thursday, February 4 at 4:30 p.m.  Read the book and then tell them what you think.