The Plight of Girls and Poverty and Crime

I am reading a book that has brought to my attention the terrible violence against girls in the third world.



Basically, disadvantaged, rural girls are lured to cities with a bogus job offer or are kidnapped off the streets to service men in brothels. Some of the most desparate situations have these girls chained naked to posts or even kept in cages. Often it is with the compliance of women that these disadvantaged girls are being used as slaves.

Many die of HIV or AIDS but there are some who survive despite these terrible odds.

Authors Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn do a superb job of raising the big issues and explaining why it's often not so easy to resolve those issues:

1. Female slavery
2. Forced female prostitution
3. Cultural docility of many females and genital mutilation
4. Rape and acid scarring as ways to control women and their families
5. Honor killings
6. Lack of maternal healthcare
7. Complications from difficult pregnancies
8. Effects of ignorance about family planning
9. Religious prescriptions about women's roles
10. Poor educations available to women
11. Financing and preparing women entrepreneurs
12. Shifting gender relations so that family resources are better applied
13. Providing more opportunities for girls



Here is a link to the PBS website on Half the Sky.

From the book's description:

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Wow. This book is outstanding and so terribly saddening at the same time. I have looked into organizations that help girls avoid these horrific life sentences....Because I'm A Girl has opportunities for Canadians and Kiva has opportunities for North Americans....

What do you think of these organizations?