Kristof, WuDunn Discuss Women's Liberation at SHS

"The fact that we're in this room today means we've all won the lottery of life, but it comes with responsibilities," said New York Times columnist and reporter Nicholas Kristof.

Kristof and his wife and fellow journalist Sheryl WuDunn gave a lecture on gender inequity at SHS last Tuesday evening. The talk was held in honor of the 225th anniversary of Scarsdale schools.

Kristof and WuDunn recently co-authored Half the Sky, which details the lives of women subjected to slavery, rape, and mutilation across the globe and provides do-it-yourself solutions for readers wanting to take action.

In Half the Sky, the authors discuss how difficult it is for many Americans to fathom the atrocities – including honor killings, sexual slavery, and genital cutting – that are committed against women around the globe.

The reality though is that many cultures undermine women, a notion that is, again, difficult for many Americans to imagine. Girls in Scarsdale don't have to worry about staying home while their brothers go to school; they're afforded equal opportunity to obtain an education.

However, in countries like Cambodia, Sudan, and Pakistan, an educated girl is an exception to the rule. When a family marries off a prepubescent girl, or looks away as she is beaten by her husband, or encourages her to immunize boys over girls, or does not allow her to be educated, most people remain silently complicit in light of larger cultural forces.

Take Srey Neth and Srey Momm for instance, two Cambodian teenagers who were lured from their families to take jobs in faraway cities by human traffickers posing as employment facilitators.

Neth and Momm, working at two different brothels against their will, were interviewed by Kristof, who convinced the brothel owners that he was a prospective customer. He offered both Neth and Momm their freedom and bought them from the brothels for a collective $353.

"When you can get a receipt for buying a human being, that is an absolute disgrace on our century," Kristof said.

He said that many Americans ask why they should care about what happens to those who are enslaved in the modern world.

"When you've actually been to rural Cambodia and seen these girls trafficked, you don't ask that question," Kristof said.

Kristof and WuDunn estimate conservatively that there are "3 million women and girls (and a very small number of boys) worldwide who can fairly be termed enslaved in the sex trade."

The authors uphold education–for both the lottery winners and losers–as the best route for helping women move from victimization and despair to liberation and self-efficiency.

Kristof and WuDunn note in their book that many American schools aren't able – or don't try – to convey to students that luxuries like new clothes, designer purses, and computers aren't the norm for the majority of people in the world.

"American schools rarely convey much understanding of the 2.7 billion people (40 percent of the world's population) who today live on less than $2 a day," they write in Half the Sky.

"So while the primary purpose of a new movement on behalf of women is to stop slavery and honor killings, another is to expose young Americans to life abroad so that they, too, can learn and grow and blossom--and then continue to tackle the problems as adults."

Scarsdale schools emphasize global interconnectedness as early as kindergarten and a number of high school students with whom I've spoken over the past few months stress the motto "non sibi" when discussing their volunteer work and ambitions for the future.

From Haiti to Cambodia to Ghana, Scarsdale students are involved in a variety of volunteer and charity projects that demonstrate an empathy for those living in a world not of new BMWs and tudor mansions, but of sewage-lined streets, malnourishment, and preventable disease.

It is clear that the Scarsdale community – known to many for its exclusivity and zero percent poverty rate – values a curriculum that exposes students to the less fortunate members of our global landscape and entrusts a sense of obligation to them to live lives of purpose.

The authors believe that when the privleged are exposed to people living in extreme poverty, their lives are actually changed more dramatically than the people they're able to help.

SHS junior Ben Rimland, who considers Kristof "a rock star in the world of muckraking," asked during the Q&A period if the authors believed large, top-down organizations used their resources in an effective manner.

Kristof responded by noting that American organizations often neglect to take adequate time to understand cultural nuances in places like Niger and Yemen, and thus are not as efficient as they could be in allocating resources.

"It's crucial to go in, listen to people and ultimately empower them," Kristof said.

Rimland told me that he thinks Scarsdale schools do a good job of exposing kids to a globalized world, but he thinks that students would benefit from listening to more speakers like Kristof, who advocate community-based initiatives, rather than representatives from large, top-down organizations.

"He gives the problem a human face," Rimland said. "It would be more useful to hear more speakers like Kristof; most of the speakers we have come from large organizations."

Kristof and WuDunn support many grassroots, localized organizations through the Half the Sky Movement, a call-to-arms for readers who have won the "lottery of life" to take action in helping the millions of women around the world who are far less fortunate.