Half the Sky

Today is World AIDS Day, an international day to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and people affected by them. According to UNAIDS, approximately 33 million people were living with the disease in 2007. There were about 2 million new infections, and about the same number of deaths, from the virus that year.

Like many things in this world, AIDS has the tendency to be a disease of gender inequality because women in developing countries, especially parts of southern Africa, aren't always able to say no to unprotected sex. I learned this interesting fact when reading the fantastic book "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. (I just finished it last night and will be returning it to Marshall Public Library later today, and I encourage everyone to check it out!)

This book tells many heartbreaking stories of oppressed women: the young Cambodian girl sold into a brothel where she then became addicted to methamphetamine, the mother-to-be in Cameroon who had a blocked cervix so her midwife sat on her pregnant belly (she subsequently died), the Pakistani woman who was gang-raped as punishment for a crime her brother didn't even commit. But, there are heartwarming stories, too, where progress is being made and lives are being transformed: a fistula hospital in Ethiopia, a brothel rescue program in India, an education program in Senegal that works to discourage genital cutting.

Then there are the statistics. Did you know that about 3 million women and girls (and a small number of boys) worldwide are "enslaved" in the sex trade? Compare that to the annual average of 80,000 African slaves in the transatlantic trade in the late 1700s. Or, did you know that 536,000 women died during pregnancy or childbirth in 2005? That's about one maternal death per minute. What about the 6,000 honor killings (and even more honor rapes) that occur each year?

It's hard to even identify with some of these tragedies -- they are so distant, so foreign. But at the same time, they are so basic. If women around the world had decent health care and education, how many of these problems would remain? Of course, we can't wave a magic wand and implement such social programs (we can't even fix our own here), but there are things you can do to help.

Check out www.charitynavigator.com to read analyses of different NGOs and see if you are interested in donating to the cause. Or head to www.kiva.org, where you can supply a micro-loan and handpick the recipient, whether it be a tailor in Lebanon or a market vendor in El Salvador. Most of all, it's important to raise awareness about the terrible crimes perpetrated against women every day. As with AIDS, the world needs to know that gender inequality in the 21st Century must be combated for the betterment of all society.