Monday, August 24, 2009

Half the Sky

Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn have recently published Half the Sky about the importance of educating and empowering women on a global scale. Carolyn McCulley has blogged about this book as well. Unfortunately she is conflicted about empowering women, but I am impressed by her involvement in these issues. She writes,
    If we preach equality because it's found on page one of the Bible, then we should be leading the charge in this area. But our solutions will be different because our end goals are different. Yes, we want to empower women. Yes, we want women to be educated. Yes, we want families to be healthier and more prosperous. But we don't want to do this by lifting up one person in the family at the expense of another.
I think there was a time when Christian women were leading the charge in this area, but no longer. I also find that Carolyn has resorted to straw man rhetoric. Where in Kristof and Wudunn's writing, do they "lift up women at the expense of men?" She does not offer an example of this, and I don't find it in Kristof's writing myself.

On the other hand, I think Carolyn has done a lot to bring global women's issues greater visibility, so I appreciate that very much.

1 comment:

believer333 said...

Not sure but I suspect that in areas where men have always had the top spots, when women are lifted up beside them in consideration, opportunity and other things such as education, it may feel to men as if they are losing something. And they are really. They are losing excessive privileges that they shouldn't have had in the first place.