Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

by Nicholas D. Kristof; Sheryl WuDunn

  Nevertheless, both male and female villagers declared themselves less satisfied with women leaders. The scholars conducting the study were puzzled by this: Services appeared to be superior, yet dissatisfaction was greater. It wasn't just male chauvinists who were upset; women villagers were also more dissatisfied. It seemed that ordinary citizens were discomfited by women leaders forced upon them, or resented the fact that the women leaders were less educated and experienced on average than male leaders. This does suggest that women politicians, at least in India, face a hurdle: Even if they do better than men at providing services, they initially are judged more harshly.

  Follow-up research did find that after a village had once had a female leader, this bias against women chiefs disappeared. Women leaders were then judged by gender-neutral standards. Such research suggests that quotas for local female leaders may be worthwhile, because they overcome the initial hurdle that blocks women candidates. An Indian-style quota of women officeholders seems to break down gender barriers so that afterward the political system becomes more democratic and open.

  Whatever the impact of women as leaders, we have some direct evidence from America's own history of the broad consequences of female political participation. As we noted earlier, maternal mortality in the United States declined significantly only once women gained the right to vote: When women had a political voice, their lives also became a higher priority. In addition, there is strong evidence that when women gained the vote, the political system responded by allocating more funds to public health programs, particularly for child health, because this was an issue that women voters were perceived as caring about strongly. Grant Miller, a scholar at Stanford University, has conducted a brilliant study of the health response when, state by state, women obtained the right to vote. He found that when women gained the vote, the politicians in that state scrambled to win favor from women voters by allocating more funds to child health care; this did not happen in states where women remained unable to vote. "Within a year of suffrage law enactment, patterns of legislative roll call voting shifted, and local public health spending rose by roughly 35 percent," Professor Miller wrote. "Child mortality declined by 8-15 percent with the enactment of suffrage laws.... Nationwide, these reductions translate into roughly 20,000 averted child deaths each year."

  The same thing happened at a national level. A year after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women all across the country the right to vote in 1920, Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Act, a landmark program for public health. The "principal force moving Congress was fear of being punished at the polls" by the new women voters, one historian wrote. The improvement in America's health during this period was stunning: The mortality rate for children aged one to four plummeted 72 percent between 1900 and 1930, although there are many other reasons for this decline as well, of course. As Professor Miller notes, opponents of women's political participation have often made the argument that if women get involved in outside activities, then children will suffer. In fact, the evidence from our own history is that women's political participation has proved to be of vast, life-saving benefit to America's children.

  A CARE Package for Goretti

  The lush landscape of northern Burundi constitutes one of the loveliest spots in Africa, with jutting hills looming over dark green fields and coffee trees swaying in the breezes. The climate is more pleasant here than in the lowlands, and the mud-walled huts are sparse. Yet this picturesque land is home to some of the most impoverished people on the planet, and one of the most forlorn of these was Goretti Nyabenda.

  Goretti was largely a prisoner in her hut, which was made of red adobe clay. Women here are supposed to get their husband's permission each time they leave the property, and her husband, a grouchy man named Bernard, didn't like to give it. Goretti was thirty-five years old and a mother of six, but she wasn't even allowed to go to the market by herself.

  Bernard and Goretti grew bananas, cassava, potatoes, and beans on a depleted half-acre plot, but they barely earned enough to survive. They were too poor to afford mosquito nets for all the children, even though malaria kills many people in the area. Bernard typically goes three times a week to a bar to drink homemade banana beer, spending $2 a session. His trips to the bar cost the family 30 percent of its disposable income.

  Goretti, who had never been to school, was not permitted to buy anything, or to deal with cash at all. In her entire life, she had never touched even a one-hundred-franc note, worth less than ten American cents. She and Bernard would walk together to the market to shop, he would hand over the money to the seller, and then she would carry the goods home. Goretti's interactions with Bernard consisted mostly of being beaten, interspersed with having sex.

  When we talked, she sat on a grass mat behind her hut. It was a sunny day, but the air was pleasantly cool and refreshing, and a chorus of insects serenaded her. Goretti was wearing a brown knit shirt--some American had donated it to charity and it had migrated to central Africa--over a colorful yellow wraparound skirt. She keeps her hair close-cropped, almost in a crew cut, because it is easier to manage that way, and she frowned as she described her mood: "I was wretched. Because I always stayed in the house, I didn't know other people and I was all on my own. My husband said a wife's job is to cook, stay in the house, or work in the fields. I lived that way, so I was frustrated and angry."

  Then Goretti's mother-in-law told her about a program started in the village by CARE, the venerable American aid organization that has focused increasingly on the needs of women and girls. Eagerly, Goretti asked Bernard if she could go to one of the CARE meetings in the village. "No," Bernard said. Goretti sulkily stayed home. Then her grandmother began telling her how wonderful CARE was, reviving her longing to participate. Goretti pleaded with Bernard, and he continued to refuse. Then, one day, Goretti went without his permission. Bernard was initially furious, but Goretti had been careful to prepare dinner early and to attend to his every need.

  CARE's program operates with "associations" of about twenty women each. So with her grandmother and other women anxious to get involved, Goretti formed a new CARE association. The members promptly elected Goretti as their president. Often the members work together, cultivating one family's field one day and another's the next time. So the twenty women all came to Goretti's fields and tilled her entire parcel of land in one day.

  "When my husband saw this, he was very happy," Goretti said slyly. "He said, 'This group is really good.' So he let me continue."

  Each woman brings the equivalent of a dime to each meeting. The money is pooled and loaned to one of the members, who must invest it in a money-making effort and then repay the sum with interest. In effect, the women create their own bank. Goretti borrowed $2, which she used to buy fertilizer for her garden. That was the first time she handled money. The fertilizer produced an excellent crop of potatoes that Goretti was able to sell over several days in the market for $7.50. So after just three months Goretti paid off her loan ($2.30, including interest), and the capital was then loaned to another woman.

  Flush with cash from her potatoes, Goretti used $4.20 of the remaining profit to buy bananas to make banana beer, which sold very well in the market. That led her to launch a small business making and selling banana beer. When it was her turn to borrow again, Goretti took out another $2 loan to expand her beer business, and then she used the profits to buy a pregnant goat. The goat had its kid a month later, so Goretti now has two goats as well as her beer business. (At night, she brings the goats into the hut so that no one can steal them.)

  Bernard looks longingly at Goretti's jars of banana beer, but she insists that he must not touch it--it is for sale, not consumption. Since Goretti is making money for the household, he grudgingly restrains himself. Her status rose when Bernard caught malaria and needed to be hospitalized. Goretti used the money she earned from selling beer, along with a loan from her CARE association, to pay the bill.

  "Now Bernard doesn't bother me," Goretti says. "He
sees that I can do things, so he asks my opinions. He sees that I can contribute." The association members also use their meetings to trade tips on how to manipulate husbands, as well as to learn how to raise animals, to resolve family conflicts, and to start businesses. Visiting nurses provide health education, teaching the women when to take children for vaccinations, how to detect STDs, and how to avoid HIV. The women were also given the chance to take HIV tests, and Goretti tested negative.

  "Before, some of the women here were sick with STDs, but they didn't know it," Goretti says. "Now they have been cured. I got injections for family planning, and if I'd known about this earlier, I wouldn't have had six kids. Maybe just three. But if I hadn't been in the group at all, I would have wanted ten kids."

  The CARE meetings are also teaching women to go to a hospital to give birth, and then to register the babies so that they have legal IDs. A vast challenge for girls in many countries is that they never get birth certificates or other legal documents, and so in official eyes they don't exist and aren't eligible for government assistance. There is a growing recognition in the aid community that a system of national ID cards, difficult to counterfeit, would help protect girls from being trafficked and would make it easier for them to get health services.

  More fundamentally, women in the CARE program learn that appropriate behavior for a female doesn't consist of hanging back, that they can contribute at meetings and take firm positions. "This was a culture where women couldn't speak," Goretti said. "There was an expression: A hen cannot speak in front of a rooster.' But now we can speak up. We're part of the community." Many of the women, including Goretti, are also attending special literacy classes through CARE; she painstakingly wrote her name for us to show that she could.

  The men here in northern Burundi tend to focus their efforts on the big local cash crop, coffee--either growing it themselves or working as paid laborers on the plantations. At the end of the harvest, flush with cash, many men traditionally use the money to take what is called a second wife--a mistress, often just a teenager, who stays until the money runs out. The second wives are paid in clothing and jewelry, and they are a big drain on household income as well as an avenue for the spread of AIDS. Now, however, the women in the CARE program are trying to eradicate this tradition. If the husband of any woman in the association tries to take on a second wife, the other wives band together in a vigilante group and drive the mistress away. Sometimes they then go to the husband and announce that they are fining him $10; if they sound authoritative enough, he sometimes pays up, and the money goes into the association's coffers.

  In a sign of how much times have changed, Bernard now goes to Goretti to ask for cash. "I don't always give it to him, because we need to save," she said. "But sometimes I give him some. He allowed me to join the group and that gave me joy, so I want him to have the chance to have fun as well." And Goretti has stopped asking permission every time she leaves the house. "I do tell him when I'm going out," she explained. "But I inform him; I don't ask."

  Goretti is planning further expansion of her business. She wants to breed goats for sale, while continuing to peddle her beer. Plenty can still go wrong: Bernard may get jealous and take it out on her; wild animals could kill her goats; a drought could destroy her crops and leave her with debts; continued instability in Burundi could lead armed groups to pillage her crops. And all the beer she is making may simply turn more local men into drunkards. This rural microfinance model can help families, but there are limits.

  Yet so far, so good--and the program is a bargain. CARE pays out less than $100 per woman over the three-year life of the project (after that, Goretti graduates, and the project begins in a new area). That means it costs a donor sixty-five cents a week to help Goretti. It improves life for her, but it also means that Burundi now has another person contributing to GNP. Likewise, Goretti's children now have money for pens and notebooks to further their education, as well as a model of what a woman can become.

  "She has changed," said Pascasie, Goretti's eldest child, a sixth-grade girl. "Now if Dad isn't home, she can go to the market and buy us something that we need."

  Goretti with her goats in front of her home in Burundi (Nicholas D. Kristof)

  As for Bernard, he was a bit reluctant to be interviewed, perhaps realizing that he was being cast for the least flattering role in the family drama. But after a bit of casual chatter about banana prices, he acknowledged that he was happier with a partner than he had been with a servant. "I see my wife making money now, and bringing cash into the house," he said. "I have more respect for her now."

  It's possible that Bernard was just telling us what we wanted to hear. But Goretti is gaining a reputation as a husband-tamer, so she is in increasing demand. "Now if there's a conflict in the neighborhood, I'm asked to help," Goretti said proudly. She added that she wanted to become even more active in community projects and attend more village meetings. Bernard was listening and looked horrified, but Goretti wasn't fazed.

  "Before, I underestimated myself," Goretti said. "I wouldn't say anything to anybody. Now I know I have good ideas, and I tell people what I think."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Axis of Equality

  A woman has so many parts to her body, life is very hard indeed.

  --LU XUN, "ANXIOUS THOUGHTS ON

  'NATURAL BREASTS'" (1927)

  We've been chronicling the world of impoverished women, but let's break for a billionaire.

  Zhang Yin is a petite, ebullient Chinese woman who started her career as a garment worker, earning $6 a month to help support her seven siblings. Then, in the early 1980s, she moved to the special economic zone of Shenzhen and found a job at a paper trading company partly owned by foreigners. Zhang Yin learned the intricacies of the paper business, and she could have stayed and risen in the firm. But she is a restless, ambitious woman, buzzing with entrepreneurial energy, so she struck out for Hong Kong in 1985 to work for a trading company there. The company went bankrupt within a year. Zhang Yin then started her own company in Hong Kong, buying scrap paper there and shipping it to firms throughout China. She soon realized that the grand arbitrage opportunity was between waste paper in the United States and in China. Since China has few forests, much of its paper is made from straw or bamboo and is of execrable quality. That made recyclable American scrap paper, derived from wood pulp and worth very little locally, a valuable commodity in China--particularly as industrialization led to soaring demand for paper.

  Working with her husband, a Taiwanese, Zhang Yin at first bought American scrap paper through intermediaries, but in 1990 she moved to Los Angeles and began to work out of her home. She drove around California in a used Dodge minivan, visiting garbage dumps and making arrangements to obtain their scrap paper. The dumps were happy to make deals with her.

  "I had to learn from scratch," Zhang Yin said. "The business was just my husband and me, and I didn't speak a word of English." She was able to ship scrap paper back to China cheaply, because ships were bringing toys and clothing from China to California ports but returning mostly empty. As Chinese demand for paper soared, Zhang Yin built up her company, and in 1995 she returned to China to open a paper-making plant in the southern boomtown of Dongguan. Her plants make containerboard, which is used to make corrugated cardboard boxes for Chinese exports.

  Zhang Yin's recycling company in California, called America Chung Nam, is now the biggest American exporter to China by volume. Her Chinese paper manufacturer, Nine Dragons Paper, has more than five thousand employees, and she has grand ambitions for it. "My goal is to make Nine Dragons, in three to five years, the leader in container-boards," she told our New York Times friend David Barboza. "My desire has always been to be the leader in an industry."

  By 2006, Zhang Yin had a net worth of $4.6 billion and topped some lists of China's richest people. She was arguably the world's richest self-made woman, although market turmoil later sent her net worth plunging and threatened her operations. In any case,
there is something larger going on here: By the reckoning of the Huron Report, which tries to track China's wealth, six of the ten richest self-made women in the world are now Chinese.

  All this reflects the way China has established a more equal playing field for women. In a larger sense, China has emerged as a model on gender issues for developing countries: It evolved from repressing women to emancipating them, underscoring that cultural barriers can be overcome relatively swiftly where there is the political will to do so. A broad range of countries around the world--Rwanda, Botswana, Tunisia, Morocco, Sri Lanka--have likewise made rapid progress in empowering women. Challenges remain, but these countries remind us that gender barriers can be dismantled, to the benefit of men and women alike.

  We sometimes hear people voice doubts about opposition to sex trafficking, genital cutting, or honor killings because of their supposed inevitability. What can our good intentions achieve against thousands of years of tradition?