Half The Sky

Over the past few days, I watched a new PBS documentary series titled, Half the Sky.   It was about the cruel plight of a very large portion of the world's women in places like Cambodia, Viet Nam, Somalia,  India, Sierra Leone, and Kenya,   Launched by Pulitizer Ptrize winning journalists, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky has become a movement focused on turning oppresion into opportunity for women around the world.

The PBS Half the Sky specials, a total of four hours of primetime television, are focused on incredibly compelling stories.

In Sierra Leone, a 14 year old girl is raped by a 'preacher', with a history of preying on young girls. In the this case, the victim and her mother are ultimately forced out of their home by the father, who takes the side of the predator preacher.

In Cambodia, a young woman named Somaly Mam, who grew up a sex slave, and does not know her real name or where she came from,  has become a powerful champion for girls subjected to the same plight.  In a country where many girls are sold by their parents into sex slavery before they are even ten years old,  Somaly Mam is a hero of the first order.

In Somalia,  Edna Adnan has created a maternity hospital to care for pregnant women, the poorest of the poor.  This is a part of the world where girls as young as 6 years are subjected to female genital mutilation, a cultural practice that goes back thousands of years. There are 130 million FGM victims in Africa.  This practice involves cutting off the clitoris of a girl child, most often without the use of any painkiller.  One old woman who was a local practitioner of FGM said she cut as many as 15 girls a day.  For her, it was simply a way to make a living.   For a man, this would be like cutting off the head of the penis.  The cruelty of it, the inhumanity of it, is off the scale.  Yet, the practice remains widespread.

Half the Sky is brilliant television.  It is what television should be used for; to enlighten. inform, and encourage change for the better.  This kind of television, when produced for third world audiences, has the potential to facilitate very rapid change. 

Here is a link to a video preview of Half the Sky...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRfDzznfEOU

Here is a link to the Half the Sky  webpage...
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/