"[D]efeating poverty is more difficult than it seems at first"(21).
This is an important distinction to make, because even though it seems like it should be obvious, rich Western countries dive in all the time with donations and idealistic intentions expecting that it will work. That somehow what they're doing is different and innovative and that they'll be the ones to get it right, all the while overlooking a few very important things, the most important of which being cultural differences. One great example of this in the book is with the groups that try to stop genital cutting. Campaigns to change laws to stop it do very little to change actual instances. When the UN puts up billboards in urban cities, the rural women who are doing most of the cutting are completely unaffected as they can't even read the signs. However, groups like Tostan, who take into account the cultural differences by allowing choice by providing information instead of patronizing the women do much better. I think this is interesting, because I probably wouldn't have really thought about it or known how to approach the problem.
People seem to think that if they just throw money at a problem, it will fix itself, especially poverty. But just giving poor people money doesn't really solve the problems. An unfortunate number of the men will just spend it on booze and a mistress. The chapter about how women allocate resources differently was interesting. It made me slightly uncomfortable to make such a generalization about men and women, however at the end of the day whatever works. Saying that there were better water services, less bribes for local officials, and more money spent on education when women were in charge is certainly appealing. The caveat that "services appeared to be superior, yet dissatisfaction was greater" when villages were run by women is a bit discouraging, and I think that it is probably still true to some extent in the United States(197). We still have strange beliefs about women, I remember in my U.S. Government class last year the teacher asked the class if we would vote for a women president or not. The men, of course, were all afraid to answer, but one girl was quite certain she wouldn't. She said that women were too emotional and so they couldn't be trusted with that level of leadership. I found this both bewildering and amusing, as men are just as emotional as women are, they just tend to show it less.
Kristof, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.
