Wednesday, October 14, 2009

How To Save The World

From the Toronto Star, how the story of a little girl living in central China helped two former Beijing correspondents for the New York Times discover the story of the century:
[Nicholas] Kristof and [Sheryl] WuDunn relate this story in their inspiring new book, Half the Sky, in which they argue that education and ending oppression of women and girls is the cornerstone to economic progress in the developing world. They call it the cause of the century, just as the anti-slavery movement was the paramount moral challenge of the 19th century....

Kristof and WuDunn also observe, tantalizingly, that in countries where terrorism is nourished, women play a negligible role in the country's economy. In Yemen, for example, women make up only 6 per cent of the non-agricultural labour force. That raises the possibility of creating a safer world if women in such places were better educated and had more influence outside the home.

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