Half the Sky Quotes

“More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Our focus has to be on changing reality, not changing laws.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“It's no accident that the countries that have enjoyed an economic take off have been those that educated girls and then gave them the autonomy to move to the cities to find work”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. “What are you doing, son?” the man asks. “You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.” The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. “It sure made a difference to that one,” he said.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“Decades from now, people will look back and wonder how societies could have acquiesced in a sex slave trade in the twenty-first century that is... bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth. They will be perplexed that we shrugged as a lack of investment in maternal health caused half a million women to perish in childbirth each year.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“The tide of history is turning women from beasts of burden and sexual playthings into full-fledged human beings.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Americans of faith should try as hard to save the lives of African women as the lives of unborn fetuses.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“You educate a boy, and you're educating an individual. You educate a girl, and you're educating a village.

-African Proverb”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“...when women gain control over spending, less family money is devoted to instant gratification and more for education and starting small businesses.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen.

This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you'll just open your heart and join in.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“When India feels that the West cares as much about slavery as it does about pirated DVDs, it will dispatch people to the borders to stop traffickers.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“The tools to crush modern slavery exist, but the political will is lacking.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. —MARK TWAIN”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“When women gain a voice in society, there's evidence of less violence.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“sexism and misogyny. How else to explain why so many more witches were burned than wizards?”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“The equivalent of five jumbo jets' worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“When the history of African development is written, it will be clear that a turning point involved the empowerment of women.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“People get away with enslaving village girls for the same reason that people got away with enslaving blacks two hundred years ago: The victims are perceived as discounted humans.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“Women's empowerment helps raise economic productivity and reduce infant mortality. It contributes to improved health and nutrition. It increases the chances of education for the next generation.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“We sometimes hear people voice doubts about opposition to sex trafficking, genital cutting, or honor killings because of their supposed inevitability. What can our good intentions achieve against thousands of years of tradition? Our response is China. A century ago, China was arguably the worst place in the world to be born female. Foot-binding, child marriage, concubinage, and female infanticide were embedded in traditional Chinese culture...So was it cultural imperialism for Westerners to criticize foot-binding and female infanticide? Perhaps. But it was also the right thing to do. If we believe firmly in certain values, such as the equality of all human beings regardless of color or gender, then we should not be afraid to stand up for them; it would be feckless to defer to slavery, torture, foot-binding, honor killings, or genital cutting just because we believe in respecting other faiths or cultures. One lesson of China is that we need not accept that discrimination is an intractable element of any society. If culture were immutable, China would still be impoverished and [women] would be stumbling around on three-inch feet.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“In India, a "bride burning"-- to punish a woman for inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry-- takes place approximately once every two hours, but rarely constitute news.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky

“...cultural barriers can be overcome relatively swiftly where there is the political will to do so.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“In general, the best clue to a nation's growth and development potential is the status and role of women. This is the greatest handicap of Muslim Middle Eastern societies today, the flaw that most bars them from modernity”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide