“If the greatest challenge of the 19th century was slavery, and that of the 20th century totalitarianism, what is the greatest challenge of the 21st century?” asked Nicholas Kristof,  speaking at the Aspen Institute’s*  August 4, 2009, McCloskey Speaker Series. His topic: “Saving the World in Your Spare Time: Foreign Policy Challenges and What We Can Do about Them.” Kristof is a regular New York Times columnist and a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Nicholas Kristof	His answer? “The greatest challenge of the 21st century is gender inequity in the developing countries.”

 

Although females outnumber males in the U.S.A., worldwide males are in the majority. The  survival problems girls encounter include not being vaccinated, not having access to adequate nutrition, not being cared for during pregnancy and childbirth, being subjected to brutal emotional and physical trauma with rape as a weapon of war, not being allowed an education, being a commodity in global sex trafficking, being subjected to genital mutilation.  And several, sometimes all, of these deficiencies can center in the body, spirit and mind of one young girl.

 

Columnist Judith Warner makes the point found in Kristof’s lecture title, “…Foreign Policy Challenges.” She writes, “Women’s issues are being framed by this [Obama] administration in terms of realpolitik: U.S. security depends on women’s empowerment. Global economic growth depends on women’s participation.”   Thus, the work we are willing to exert  on gender equality has an effect on our nation’s safety and position.

 

Our work must include attending to problems that exist in our own country, too.  In responding to a later audience question, Kristof noted the shock Americans felt at the poverty revealed by  Hurricane Katrina and the failure of journalism to enlighten us. He noted, too, that the young girls who run away into the arms of pimps are truly enslaved. But the most horrendous scenes are abroad, their order of magnitude enormous, he stressed.

 

“It is God’s will. There is nothing we can do,” says one Pakistani husband who has just lost his wife and stillborn child. Kristof disagrees. “That’s incorrect. If men had uteruses, ‘paternity wards’ would get resources, ambulances would transport pregnant men to hospitals free of charge, deliveries would be free…One of the most lethal forms of sex discrimination is this systematic inattention to reproductive health care, from family planning to childbirth—so long as those who die are impoverished, voiceless women.”  Women are replaceable, a merchandisable commodity.

• A Pakistani saying: “If your cow dies, that is a tragedy; if your wife dies, you can always get another.” In Pakistan, a woman dies every 35 minutes in maternity-related problems, according to United Nations figures.

• Along the India/Nepal border girls are specifically bred for sex trafficking.
  
  
• An old Russian peasant adage: “A wife is nice twice. When she is brought into the house [as a bride], and when she is carried out of it to her grave.”  Current Russia/Ukraine fact: Over 800,000 females have been trafficked for the sex trade over the past ten years.

Worldwide, one woman dies each minute during labor and childbirth, while 20 are injured. One of the most serious injuries is fistula— an injury that leads to a lifetime of shame, isolation, and mortification. A fistula is an abnormal opening between the reproductive tract and body cavities and surfaces. Leaking of fecal matter and urine occurs, with resulting sores and horrible odors. The number is rather conservatively estimated at two million affected women. Fistulas can be both obstetric and traumatic. The latter reflects the changing nature of war in which women and girls are violently raped as a terror tactic and a form of gender-based torture. These girls and women become the 21^st century’s lepers, says Kristof.  Note that fistulas have been almost unknown in the West since the 19^th century.

 

The issue of obstetric fistulas highlights many of the problems of gender inequity: through malnutrition, the skeletal structure of girls, including the pelvic girdle, does not develop sufficiently; through early sexual intercourse at 12 to 15 years of age, pregnancy occurs and the unborn child’s head is too large to be birthed; mothers- and sisters-in-law don’t believe medical care is necessary; husbands don’t have the taxi fare to transport the woman, etc. .

	Kristof related the story of a 14-year old who, after giving birth, was placed in a hut outside the village by her husband. The hut had no doors so that hyenas would attack. She crawled all day to reach a missionary site from which she was transported to Addis Abba and was saved by surgery.  Ms. Mamitu’s story is one of incredible courage and strength. She received free surgery 42 years ago and was given a job making hospital beds. Then she began helping during surgeries, clipped some sutures, and began performing surgeries herself. Now she trains other doctors in the procedure, although she has been an illiterate surgeon until recently when she started night school, working now at a third grade level.
Ms Mamitu

 

What can education do for a girl?  An educated girl marries later. The birth rate goes down. The babies are healthier, the mother safer. The women educate their children. The family’s earning power goes up. The woman’s wages go up. The woman takes control of the family’s budget. Women return 90% of their earnings to the family, while men return 30 to 40%, for men tend to make spending decisions around consumer items, such as alcohol and tobacco. Girls are the solution, says Kristof. Educate them and bring them into the economy.

 

Spoiler alert! Helping is harder than it looks.  Why not just set up a school for girls? The school may be built but teachers never appear. Set up a scholarship for a girl to continue into secondary education, and the school’s director may just pick the prettiest girl and require sexual favors from her.

 

On the other hand, some solutions are fairly simple.  It costs $100 to build and bring into the school one student; a fifty cent pill can de-worm a student for an entire year and cut down drastically on absenteeism.  And bribery does work: Mexican families receive a stipend for their children’s perfect school attendance. UNICEF provides eleven-cent lunches to induce parents to send children to school and then sends them home with a bag of flour or a jug of oil.

 

Kristof urges us to get smart about our philanthropy and move beyond the passive signing of a check and mailing it off to distant lands. Aid organizations are improving rapidly through employing technology’s advances and applying best practice business standards. Take a closer look at KIVA.org, a person-to-person micro-lending site—we can decide where our (as little as) $25 will go, see the entrepreneur, check out the risk factors, see the ratings for the in-the-field partners, over time be repaid, and reinvest if we choose. Another site Kristof mentioned is GLOBALGIVING.com with “a million little earth-changing ideas” such as weekly sports sessions for 7 to 9 year olds, computer skills training for at-risk girls, and a medical camp for rescued girls and women, all in Mumbai. 

 

Images of "earth-changing ideas” from GlobalGiving.com

 

Warner writes, “Women’s empowerment won’t be delivered at the end of a gun or through economic sanctions or even overt criticism, if it cuts into accepted cultural practices. This is messy stuff; some of our most sensitive allies have horrific records on women’s rights. Programs that show success tend to be slow-moving and incremental. Can all this complexity attract—much less sustain—the attention of the public?”

 

Kristof provides us with some initial ideas about what individuals can do in the face of complex, overwhelming situations. Accept his challenge to begin righting the world for women by eliminating gender inequity, and in doing so, right the world for humanity.

 

NOTE:  Coming out September 8 is Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide written by Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a New York Times journalist. 

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Sources:

New York Times, Nicholas Kristof columns:

                  June 12, 2005, “The Illiterate Surgeon”

                  July 29, 2009, “Crisis in the Operating Room”

                  July 18, 2009, “His Maternal Instinct”

                  July 26, 2009, “Not a Victim, but a Hero”

New York Times, Judith Warner column, July 12, 2009

 

Websites: KIVA.org; GLOBALGIVING.com; Girleffect.org; Traffickingproject.blogspot.com; fistulafoundation.org

 

Please also see Winchester LWV Bulletin article, “A Cost Too Steep for Humanity to Bear,” Spring 2005.

 

*The Aspen Institute is a non-partisan organization which seeks to provide a neutral and balanced venue for discussing critical issues. An invitation to speak at the Aspen Institute does not imply endorsement or approval of the views expressed by the speaker.

 

-Gloria Welch Legvold