Women of Sex Trafficking

Sex Trafficking

Written by husband and wife team Kristof and WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide exposes the oppression of women worldwide as the final frontier of human slavery and social injustice. Gender disparity underlies a host of political, social, and economic problems worldwide, according to the authors. Both authors are Pulitzer-prize winning journalists who wrote for The New York Times. The authors bring their journalistic style to Half the Sky by traveling around the world offering first-hand insight into what is arguably the most persistent and problematic social and political issue in all of human history. While the authors are prepared to focus on the sheer immediacy of the issue, most readers understand that these are not modern problems. Sex trafficking, gendercide, and other extreme manifestations of sexism have occurred in multiple cultures throughout human history, which is one reason why they are perpetuated still today after more than a century of social progress in areas related to civil rights. The authors understand that gender issues like the ones discussed in Half the Sky are the last remaining barrier to social equity: and also present gendercide as being frankly on par with the African Slave trade and even with the Holocaust. Their comparisons are not trite but honest, backed up by gory details and alarming statistics.

The issues that Kristof and WuDunn describe are also parallel with the political, economic, and social oppression of women that is the less extreme manifestation of sexism worldwide. Although the authors refrain from exploring the sociological underpinnings of the sex trade, their solutions to the problem of gendercide are rooted in feminist discourse. Empowerment is the key to the alleviation of suffering. The authors show how individual efforts and small-scale grassroots projects can be many times more powerful than trite public policy that never affects the women it was designed to do. Whether due to too many layers of bureaucracy or to a culture too tolerant of the oppression of women, policy initiatives have failed miserably. The authors travel to some of the world's hotspots of human trafficking in women, including a shocking stint purchasing child prostitutes in Cambodia in order to liberate them and re-introduce them to their village of origin. Their travels bring Kristof and WuDunn face-to-face with culturally accepted -- or even encouraged -- practices that abjectly violate the rights of women such as mercy killing. India, China, and Africa are the focal points of Half the Sky because these are the regions of the world most affected by the problem. These regions have the most extreme cases of sexism and gendercide and therefore make for good journalism.