Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

A call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of women struggling under profoundly dire circumstances: a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery; an Ethiopian woman left for dead after a difficult birth; an Afghan wife beaten ruthlessly by her husband and mother-in-law. But we meet, as well, those who have triumphed—a formerly illiterate fistula patient who became a surgeon in Addis Ababa; an Indian woman who saved herself and her children from prostitution—and those who make it their work to provide hope and help to other women: the victim of gang rape who galvanized the international community and created schools in rural Pakistan; the former Peace Corps volunteer who founded an organization that educates and campaigns for women’s rights in Senegal. Through their stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to progress lies in unleashing women’s potential—and they make clear how each of us can help make that happen.

Fiercely moral, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.