Summary: The Axis of Equality, Grassroots vs. Treetops, What You Can Do: Chapters 12–14

Chapter 12: The Axis of Equality

Using her intelligence, hard work, and ambition, Zhang Yin advanced from being a factory worker in China to owning a multibillion-dollar paper recycling business. As Chapter 12 reveals, she’s since become a billionaire. Her success is due not only to her ambition and determination but also to China’s policies of creating a “more equal playing field” for women in both education and the economy. China’s success in implementing policies shows that “gender barriers can be dismantled” and paves the way for women’s success.

Prior to the rule of Mao Zedong, gender inequality was deeply entrenched in China via various traditional practices. Mao’s government strongly enforced gender equality policies, and in a relatively short time, women cast off oppressive tradition and became empowered members of society. It was this empowerment of women, Kristof and WuDunn argue, that allowed China to become a global economic powerhouse. The authors suggest that the West should encourage the building of labor-intensive factories in developing countries because these mainly hire women, who gain financially and in gender equality. Similar policies, they say, are catapulting Rwanda, where women also hold important governmental posts, into becoming the leading economy in Africa.

One American woman joined Women for Women International (WWI) so she could sponsor a woman in a developing country. The sponsored party, Claudine Mukakarisa of Rwanda, had suffered terribly during the Rwandan genocide but was now ready to create a new and better life for herself. Claudine received $15 a month from her sponsor; she spent some of the money on necessities for her family and saved the rest. She also went to vocational training classes given by WWI, where she learned embroidery. Some of Claudine’s work has since been sold in upscale US department stores.

Chapter 13: Grassroots vs. Treetops

Chapter 13 deals with the difficult issue of genital cutting in parts of Africa. Genital cutting of girls is a tradition that goes back centuries, if not millennia. During the procedure, a girl has some or all of her external genitalia cut away (usually by an untrained local woman). The purpose of this practice, Kristof and WuDunn suggest, is to “minimize a woman’s sexual pleasure [to] make her less likely to be promiscuous.” The procedure is done without anesthesia or antiseptic blades; heavy bleeding may occur, and the scar tissue left from the procedure may make childbirth more dangerous later on. Initial international efforts to stop the practice were often met with outrage, even from women, who defended genital cutting as a part of their tradition and culture. African women asserted that they wanted the procedure, and they resented foreigners who tried to stop it.

A West African organization called Tostan had the greatest success in limiting genital cutting. Its success arose from its emphasis on engaging everyone in a village in discussing the health problems associated with the procedure. The key to ending cutting, Kristof and WuDunn say, is “local buy-in” to the program the organization promotes and “changing village attitudes as a whole,” with sensitivity to all villagers. For example, when Tostan talked with villagers about “women’s rights,” village men were outraged and refused to participate. When local Tostan workers changed the wording to “people’s rights,” the men returned and were willing to consider Tostan’s point of view. Tostan workers caution that advocates should inform but never advise villagers. Change comes when the villagers themselves decide to change. For instance, Tostan workers learned that several villages had come to agree to stop genital cutting because women and men from these villages intermarried. Both sets of villages had to decide on their own that stopping genital cutting would not be an obstacle to marriage.

Thus, positive change happens person by person and village by village. Many Western aid efforts fail, Kristof and WuDunn warn, because they’re “decreed by foreigners high up in the treetops” and not down among the grassroots. The best approach, the authors urge, is bottom-up instead of top-down. The American high school girls who started Girls Learn International used this approach: each member partnered with a local woman in a poor rural area. One American girl partnered with Mukhtar Mai, who fought rape in rural Pakistan.

Chapter 14: What You Can Do

Chapter 14 uses the example of civil rights and the abolition of the slave trade to illustrate how committed activists can change the attitude of entire nations. In the United States, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. rallied the nation against Jim Crow and drew popular support for civil rights protections. In 18th-century Britain, the transatlantic slave trade was immensely profitable, and few Britons opposed it. When William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson dedicated their lives to educating their fellow citizens about the horrors of the slave trade, this new knowledge galvanized the British public, which united in calling for its abolition. Although it cost Britain economically, the slave trade was abolished by law in 1833. Morality trumped profitability.  

Kristof and WuDunn argue that empowering women in developing countries is today’s equivalent of banning the slave trade. Although developed countries should support gender equality in every way possible, the real impetus for change must come from the nations of the developing world—and the West should support these local efforts. Many of the world’s most pressing problems, they argue, might be solved by empowering women in developing countries. For example, overpopulation and the environmental degradation it causes would be lessened if girls are educated, get jobs, and thus have fewer children.

An organization such as Heifer International empowers women by giving them goats, whose milk they can sell for money that helps them support their family. The goat a woman in rural Zimbabwe got from Heifer eventually led to her getting a PhD from an American university—the realization of her lifelong dream.

Kristof and WuDunn recommend that people who want to help women in developing countries follow four simple principles: (1) build liberal-conservative coalitions in your developed nation, (2) resist the temptation to oversell what you will achieve (in case you fall short), (3) don’t ignore men in an effort to help women, and (4) don’t be too attached to a particular viewpoint about women’s roles and empowerment. They also suggest four “appalling realities” Western activists should focus on: maternal mortality, human trafficking, sexual violence against women, and routine oppression of women. Further, they advise Western governments to invest in girls’ education, provision of iodized salt to improve brain development and cognition, and programs to eliminate obstetric fistula. All these goals, they say, should be met via grassroots organizing and with the support of local communities.

The authors also discuss how the widespread availability of television has reshaped women’s view of their roles. Women in developing countries see TV programs in which women characters are far more liberated than they are. The TV characters become role models for local women who imagine emulating them. Female TV characters also tend to soften men’s attitudes toward women. Thus, TV plays a role in influencing attitudes of and about poor rural women.

At the end of Chapter 14, Kristof and WuDunn state that Westerners who get involved in a humanitarian movement greater than themselves will experience a sense of purpose that will promote their own happiness and sense of fulfillment. They then suggest some organizations that interested Westerners might connect with to find this satisfying sense of purpose.

Analysis: The Axis of Equality, Grassroots vs. Treetops, What You Can Do: Chapters 12–14

Empowerment is a theme that runs through these three chapters. Not all aspiring entrepreneurs in developing countries become billionaires, as did Zhang Yin, but many use education, the support of women’s aid groups, and/or microfinance to create successful businesses. The education of women and their subsequent entry into the workforce is believed by many experts to be the driving force in China’s rise as a global economic power. Kristof and WuDunn propose investment in industries that will attract female workers because once women are educated and earn money, the effects of their empowerment expand outward into all aspects of society. 

In many parts of the world, the oppression of women arises from age-old traditions that define women’s role in society and the family. It was political revolution in China that overthrew oppressive Chinese traditions and enabled women to work and flourish. In countries without such powerful government intervention, women have a harder time empowering themselves. Moreover, in many nations (including China), pregnant women may still abort female fetuses because they value male over female children. Thus, in China as in India, there is a mismatch between the numbers of women and men. This imbalance contributes to the sexual assault and rape of women by young men who are sexually frustrated because they can’t find wives. Some devaluation of women may persist despite the progress that has been made in educating and empowering women.

This section’s example of genital cutting shows the differences between change from without and change from within. Women who have tried to eradicate the practice are challenging long-held cultural beliefs and traditions. To accomplish their goal and empower women to live full sexual lives, organizations that work to end female genital cutting have realized that success comes from the grassroots, not from the elites. These activists empower both men and women by giving them the facts and then letting them decide for themselves what they want to do. The villagers are respected and empowered to make their own decisions on such delicate and controversial issues. If the villagers decide to abandon genital cutting, it’s far more likely that the practice will die out than if outsiders tell the villagers what to do. As one activist said, “Everyone has to change together.”

Another women’s rights advocate noted that “empowerment is contagious . . . [from] person to person . . . [and] village to village.” Kristof and WuDunn argue that empowerment is also contagious in developed countries. They recommend that Westerners get involved in causes that are bigger than themselves to find true purpose and even happiness in their lives. To this end, they outline the steps, goals, and methods Western individuals and aid groups should follow to militate for meaningful change for women in developing nations.

The decision to close the book on this note has drawn some criticism from book reviewers. Rohini Pande of Harvard Magazine, for instance, wondered about who benefits most from the actions taken by Western readers of Half the Sky. She wrote that the recommended Western activism seems more like “an attempt at moral improvement of Westerners than effective ways to bring about change” for women in poor developing countries. Yet reviewers have also acknowledged Half the Sky as justly critical of overly optimistic Western initiatives. The Kirkus Review, for instance, praised Kristof and WuDunnfor emphasizing “the failure of large-scale international aid, which often comes in the form of . . . ‘tree-top’ projects as opposed to grassroots efforts.”