A student group held a presentation of the movie Half the Sky, based on the book of the same name. The movie stars journalist Nicholas Kristof, as he and special celebrity guests travel around the world, “saving” women wherever they go.
As many other feminists and activists have written, Half the Sky, and Kristof’s writing in general, are extremely problematic. It reeks of racism and imperialism. To celebrate the white savior narratives that Kristof propagates, especially in a university setting where it is given authority, is most unfortunate.
The film was followed by a panel discussion of experts from NGO’s, international organizations, and the academy. One of the panelists was from The Girl Initiative for Results and Learning (GIRL), sponsored by Nike and Xerox. The panelist spoke forcefully about the good that comes out of projects like Half the Sky, about how women in “developed” countries should “help” women in “undeveloped” countries, and that the women of the latter category need to be “empowered.” She mentioned these women must endure honor killings, widow burning, forced trafficking, and other crimes of supposedly backwards cultures.
At no point did this panelist, or any other panelist, talk about the structural forces that affect and shape women’s lives globally; forces like structural adjustment programs from the IMF, so-called development programs from the World Bank, and militarism meant to “save” women in the Third World. At no point did the panelists talk about the agency of supposedly trafficked women as sex workers.
Meanwhile, companies like Nike and Xerox, that fund research for The Girl Initiative for Results and Learning, have a history of violating women workers’ rights and attacking workers’ rights in general. When asked if it was a conflict of interest to accept money from companies that exploit women for funding her research, the GIRL panelist replied, “I firmly believe that companies like Nike just want their women workers to be rich enough to buy their products.”
For fans of Half the Sky, the endpoint of women’s empowerment is this: women’s bodies become just another accumulation strategy under neoliberalism. If white people can’t save Brown women, then global capital will. This endpoint becomes just another story that people like Nicholas Kristof fit nicely into yet another book, movie, or column. How can feminists counter such lies?
Writing about Half the Sky, a sex worker recently remarked that “it is crucial for journalists to confirm every piece of information they receive before sending it to print. I wanted to point out how easily such fabricated narratives can proliferate into the mainstream consciousness if reporters do not exercise caution…Sex workers are not part of the problem. We are part of the solution.”
Feminist researchers and storytellers must oppose the myths that circulate in global patriarchy and global capitalism that construct Third World women as needing to be saved. They must expand their methodologies to include and foreground those women most affected by globalization and structural violence. They must recognize and foreground the organizing and labor those women are engaged in. Theories and solutions must emerge from collaborative and collective conversations. Then, feminist researchers and storytellers can tell the truth. Women are organizing everywhere. Everywhere, women are working to create a better world and a whole sky.
We don’t need Nicholas Kristof. We don’t need Half the Sky. We all have other stories to tell.
Paul Seltzer, pseltzer@gwu.edu
About Guest Blogger
While I agree that some of Kristof and WuDunn’s work in Half the Sky is problematic from a feminist standpoint, I think it is important to point out that the majority of the examples presented in the book and the documentary are examples of activists – mainly women but also some men – in their own communities who are leading efforts of change with and for other women in their communities and countries. These are not examples of “developed” world “saving” women in “developing” countries, or “white people saving brown women” as this blog post claims; these are grassroots, often indigenous and community-based efforts. Half the Sky is calling attention to these efforts ongoing within countries and getting support from those in developed countries to support those grassroots efforts.
That said, I wish Half the Sky had also given examples of grassroots efforts led by men to avoid the trap of demonizing men in developing countries. I also agree more attention could be paid to structural reasons that lead to disempowerment of both women and men. Nonetheless, Half the Sky is highlighting grassroots initiatives, not western/developed world initiatives, a point that this blog post ignores.
Also I’d like to point out that this blog fails to acnowledge Sheryl WuDunn as co-writer and co-host of Half the Sky. A feminist critique should be careful to not fall into the trap of ignoring the female author in favor of the male because he is the most visible.
Hi Lindsey,
Thanks for your response. I’m definitely sympathetic to what you say about reporting on grassroots efforts. But the problem is, Half the Sky doesn’t do that in a way that promotes critical action. The book (and movie) de-historicizes and de-contextualizes the environment in which many of these efforts take place. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but from what I remember, every vignette centers on one or two women that labor for change in their respective hometowns and home countries, without any kind of review of why the conditions are the way they are. But, in reality, it’s never one or two women in isolation that create change. Half the Sky ignores the very material feminist networks that have been built by women in groups, collectives, cooperatives, etc., both domestically and transnationally, that act as and produce counter-narratives to the processes of globalization that were supposed to bring people out of poverty, but made things much, much worse. Where are the Zapatista women in Half the Sky? Or the sex worker collectives? Where are the stories of the women who have organized against microfinance because debt has destroyed their communities? Half the Sky replaces supporting collective action with supporting individuals, which, while sometimes helpful, purposely hides the structural histories of poverty, imperialism, and violence. What we’re left with is a very pretty picture of some very un-pretty topics, thanks to, of course, the Western journalist who oh so luckily happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Additionally, I’m a bit curious as to why you contrast “grassroots initiatives” with “western/developed world initiatives.” This seems to suggest that grassroots initiatives only exist within the “developing” world, while world initiatives come out of the “developed” world. The implications of that contrast are that local issues in the Third World do not have global consequences, while issues in the First World are only ever meant to be global and have no local consequences (probably because they’re already “developed”). There is a danger here, in that this contrast ignores the global/structural effects of women’s organizing in the Third World, and also ignores the challenges that women organize around in the First World. (I think of the way that Kristof practically coerces the women in Half the Sky to re-tell the stories of their traumas, while rarely speaking a word on violence against women in the United States.)
As for your last point about leaving out WuDunn, I must concede that it was the wrong thing to do. So, if I may correct my final paragraph:
“We don’t need Nicholas Kristoff or Sheryl WuDunn. We don’t need Half the Sky. We all have other stories to tell.”