New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and a Rice University student view a poster for an affordable vein illuminator. Rice students devised this and other technology solutions to help effect positive change in developing countries.
De-worming pills that cost 50 cents per year and enable children to stay in school. Micro loans to women entrepreneurs struggling to earn a living. Sanitary pads for girls so they don’t have to stay at home when they’re on their periods. These are not grand interventions — but step-by-step, they could help reverse the gender discrimination that has condemned millions of women around the world to a life of illiteracy, financial dependence on males, sexual slavery or death, said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof during a recent address at the institute.
Kristof, who calls gender inequality “the biggest moral challenge of this century,” tackles the issue in “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” a book he has co-authored with Sheryl WuDunn. The authors seek not only to highlight the plight of women and girls, but also to illustrate how small, innovative solutions can effect positive change in the lives of the world’s poor, especially women, and why anything should be done at all.
The stories shared by Kristof were quite disturbing — an Ethiopian girl who was starved by her parents so her brothers could have food to eat, the women of Niger who have a 1 in 7 chance of dying in child labor, a Pakistani woman who was abused by her husband with the tacit approval of her mother-in-law, Cambodian girls who are kidnapped and sold to brothels, and girls who are denied education because of their gender.
One takeaway message is that the oppression of women is a consequence of poverty, and also contributes to it. When resources are limited, females are at a higher risk of being forced to sacrifice their welfare than are males. Kristof sees the empowerment of women as part of the solution to poverty. His research shows that women are more likely to invest in the welfare of their households, educating children and sharing their wealth with their communities. He found that in some countries, suffering was a result not just of low income, but also bad spending choices, with male-headed households on average spending 20 percent of income on alcohol, tobacco and prostitution, and only 2 percent on education.
While we as individuals cannot save the world, we can help change the lives of a few of our fellow citizens, he said. It was fitting that Kristof’s address was followed by an exhibition of some of the technology solutions for developing countries that have been devised by Rice’s undergraduate students. The ideas include a cost-effective CPAP, a machine used to provide respiratory support to babies in neonatal intensive care; an affordable vein illuminator, which is designed to enable pediatricians locate veins accurately when giving injections; entrepreneurship lessons for women and weatherization of a school building to improve its energy efficiency and comfort during cold weather.
Likeleli Seitlheko is a research associate for the Baker Institute Energy Forum.