kayte
09-10-2009, 02:50 PM
So for the first time in at least two years--I have control over the car radio --well at least on the two days my three year old is off to preschool.. lol... Anyway I was listening to NPR today and caught the Diane Rehm show. The guests were pulitzer prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, (the first to win the prize as a married couple) and they were discussing their new book "Half the Sky". It is about oppression of women all over the world and steps to turn it around.
It was fascinating. I had absolutely no idea about the severity and sheer numbers of many of things they discussed. They discussed that considering birth rate and that women biologically live longer there should be more women than men in the world, yet there are some 100 million women are what they termed "missing" around the world--from facts like families getting health care and vaccinations for their boy children only (some countries if you get sick as a child girls are 75 % more likely to die), in many countries girl babies are aborted (china's birth rates are 100 girls born to every 128 boys), that in some countries because of treatment the life expectancy is as much as 35 years less than men, sex trade with children and teens, just poverty where families feed boys over girls, lack of education, and staggering number of women to die every minute around the world in childbirth (they quoted studies illustrating medical intervention would save more than 90% of those women)...
Here is an article from the New York Times in preview of the book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html
Here is the authors' website.
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/
They discussed viable solutions--and made a strong cause for fixing these issues around world past the human tragedy--but that educated and empowered women in a society it tends to undermine extremism and terrorism.
I have requested my library order the book and have ordered a copy myself.
The amazon website has a 15 minute interview with the couple and first chapter as a downloadable pdf.
It was fascinating. I had absolutely no idea about the severity and sheer numbers of many of things they discussed. They discussed that considering birth rate and that women biologically live longer there should be more women than men in the world, yet there are some 100 million women are what they termed "missing" around the world--from facts like families getting health care and vaccinations for their boy children only (some countries if you get sick as a child girls are 75 % more likely to die), in many countries girl babies are aborted (china's birth rates are 100 girls born to every 128 boys), that in some countries because of treatment the life expectancy is as much as 35 years less than men, sex trade with children and teens, just poverty where families feed boys over girls, lack of education, and staggering number of women to die every minute around the world in childbirth (they quoted studies illustrating medical intervention would save more than 90% of those women)...
Here is an article from the New York Times in preview of the book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html
Here is the authors' website.
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/
They discussed viable solutions--and made a strong cause for fixing these issues around world past the human tragedy--but that educated and empowered women in a society it tends to undermine extremism and terrorism.
I have requested my library order the book and have ordered a copy myself.
The amazon website has a 15 minute interview with the couple and first chapter as a downloadable pdf.