Half the Sky

Endless injustices are committed every day around the world, to such an extent that it is virtually impossible to keep up with them all. There is one particularly widespread form of injustice, however, which receives incredibly little media coverage: the hundreds of thousands of women, especially those in developing countries, who every year endure violence, discrimination, poverty, and in some cases, even death. During their time working as journalists for The New York Times, the authors discovered astounding inconsistencies in the reporting of certain events, and in particular, regarding female discrimination. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China, for instance, in which between 400 and 800 protesters died, was rightly reported as one of the bloodiest events of the century. At the same time, however, it is estimated that every year in China, 39,000 girls die in their first year of life because they do not receive the same attention and care as boys, but newspapers routinely fail to report these figures. The same pattern is also found in countless other developing or less wealthy countries: in India, for instance, it is estimated that, every two hours, a woman is disfigured with acid or covered with kerosene and burnt for behaviour that is deemed inappropriate or disobedient. It does not require much research to discover that, since females tend to live longer, there are more women in the world than men. There is a stark exception to this trend, however, in those countries where women are severely discriminated against, and where they seem to simply vanish into thin air. Just like cases of negligence against girls in China, press coverage of this kind of discrimination is also practically non-existent.

After discovering these alarming inconsistencies, the authors decided to conduct further research, and to raise awareness about certain gender-based issues, while also putting forward several solutions to the problem. It is widely accepted that the West cannot simply step in and try to fix the problem, because these discriminatory behaviours are often deeply rooted in social, cultural, and religious rules, and are much more complex than many people think. There are, however, several steps that more advanced countries can take, in order to improve the conditions of many women around the world.

The first thing we need to do is raise awareness about these problems, rather than simply ignoring them, because in the past this has often pushed governments of developing countries to intervene, in order to avoid international and diplomatic embarrassment. We must also promote girls’ education, as this has previously led to outstanding results, and is therefore worth implementing again. Whichever method we choose, the first step must be to recognise the problem, to measure its extent with statistics, and to seek suitable solutions without disrespecting the cultural values of the country in question. In essence, we need to work on recognition, statistical quantification and open-mindedness.