205: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn

Half the Sky: Turning Opression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn

From the Book Description:

From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.

They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.

Why this is progressive/liberal: Kristof and his wife WuDunn won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Kristof has also won a Pulitzer for his commentaries in the NYT on the plight of Darfur. Kristof works tirelessly to bring attention to human rights violations across the globe.

Buy the Kindle version: Half the Sky

239: America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation by Elaine Tyler May

America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation

Book description:

"In 1960, the FDA approved the oral contraceptive that would come to be known as "the pill." Within a few years, millions of women were using it. At a time when the population was surging, many believed that the drug would help eradicate poverty around the globe, ensure happy and stable marriages, and liberate women. America and the Pill reveals the ways in which the pill did and did not fulfill these utopian dreams, while also chronicling the stories of the creators, testers, and users who ultimately made the pill their own."

Why this is progressive/liberal: It may be impossible to exaggerate the impact the Pill had on the women's liberation movement. This book puts the arrival of this easy and efficient contraceptive into historical context. Arriving as it did, as the baby boom demographic was about to enter college, the Pill influenced second wave Feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Buy the Kindle version: America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation

272: The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

In this bestseller Naomi Wolf argues that as women gain more power the socially constructed standards of beauty become more rarefied and harder to attain. Striving for this artificial concept of beauty hurts women. But where does this idea of beauty come from? Wolf argues that concepts of feminine beauty are largely constructed men and serve as a way of shaping women's behavior.

Why this is progressive/liberal: Feminism is one of the key foundations of progressivism. Wolf's book is flawed by its attempt to be a popular work, but her engaging writing and relatively well-done research makes this a good introduction to the complicated relationship between the social ideal of beauty and how it affects women.

Buy the Kindle version: The Beauty Myth



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