Half the Sky: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Investing in Education. Kristof and WuDunn describe living in central China as newlyweds, and getting to know a teenaged girl name Dai Manju. Her family had “no running water, no bicycle, no wristwatch, no clock, no radio,” and couldn’t afford to send Dai Manju to school, or even see the point—after all, both her parents were illiterate. When she was told to drop out in sixth grade, she yearned for school and was given bits of pencils and paper by affectionate teachers. Kristof and WuDunn wrote an article about Dai Manju, and a reader donated ten thousand dollars to fund her education, which ended up funding a new school as well. The impact was tremendous, and Kristof and WuDunn called the donor to thank him. But the donor had only sent a hundred dollars—it turned out that the bank had made a mistake, which thankfully it honored. Dai Manju went on to accounting school, finding jobs for family members and sending money home until her parents became among the village’s most wealthy. At thirty, she had married a skilled worker, had a baby, and was on a career path to become an entrepreneur. The scholarships accidentally funded by the bank led to echoes of Dai Manju’s story across the village, with girls finding factory jobs, sending money back home, and renewing the cycle of prosperity.

As the authors write, schooling is both requisite to fight poverty and “often a precondition for girls and women to stand up against injustice.” But the benefits are difficult to measure statistically, they stress, and advocates tend to frame the data in ways that better market their cause. The authors offer the counterexample of Kerala, which is one of the best-educated places in rural India yet hasn’t grown economically. The authors regard this and the few similar examples as exceptions, but stress that, “education isn't always a panacea.” Most of their own evidence is anecdotal, but some empirical evidence exists attesting to the benefits of girls’ education, such as a study in 1970s Nigeria, which found that each extra year of primary education reduced the number of babies a woman had by 0.26.

Building schools isn’t always the answer to increasing education access, the authors argue, since teachers don’t always fulfill their jobs. Deworming children, however, is one of the most cost-effective ways to impact schooling. Removing intestinal worms worked for the American South in the early 1900s, and it works for African countries today. Providing girls with resources to manage menstruation is another strategy—when girls have only a rag to absorb blood, fear of embarrassment from stains often keeps them at home, but providing free pads can keep girls in the classroom. This is not without complications, though—the authors cite a pad distribution project in African started by the company that makes Tampax and Always products. Some schools lacked toilets, so the company built toilets at enormous financial cost, but cultural taboos about blood prevented girls from being able to throw pads away. Another way to increase girls’ education is to provide iodine, which is necessary for fetus brains to develop, by simply iodizing salt. One study suggests that iodine deficiency, which affects some 31 percent of households in developing countries, can decrease a child’s IQ by up to fifteen points. Iodine supplies for women can help their daughters perform in school better and longer.

Kristof and WuDunn claim that bribery is another effective way to boost girls’ education, though it’s never called bribery. In the 1990s, a Mexican official began an experimental antipoverty program in which families were awarded stipends for sending sons and daughters to school. The program yielded impressive results and is now called Oportunidades. This widely admired program, the authors report, gives cash grants from the central government directly to mothers, who are more likely to spend it for the child’s benefit. The authors praise Oportunidades for its emphasis on external evaluations, which gave the administrators a clear view of its successes and shortcomings. By allowing parents to invest in their children the way the wealthy do, “the program broke up “the typical transmission path of poverty from generation to generation,” the authors report, and raised education rates by 20 percent for girls.

In other programs, bribery with food at school also works to encourage parents to maintain their children’s attendance, the authors write, and it helps students pay attention, provides nutrition, and prevents stunted growth. Though school meals cost only ten cents per child per day, the authors report that lack of funding prevents some 50 million children from benefiting. While school attendance is important, so is learning ability once in school, the authors write. One study in Kenya showed that the most effective of six ways to encourage good test scores was to offer a small scholarship to middle school girls for the next grade depending on their results. Fearing embarrassment, boys raised their scores, too.

The authors stress that some people object to foreign aid, given that so many aid efforts fail. When Bono, a champion for aid in Africa, gave a talk at an international conference, he was met with resistance from some Africans in attendance. One Kenyan man has begged donors, “For God's sake, please just stop.” The authors acknowledge some points as valid: aid is easier to mess up, they write, than most Westerners expect, especially since just providing a resource, such as mosquito nets, doesn’t guarantee its use. As an example, the authors describe the HIV transmission-preventing baby formula that many women—even if they receive an AIDS test, and give birth in a hospital, and the hospital has the formula—will chuck on the way home from the hospital, because feeding a newborn from a bottle would betray that they have AIDS. Another example is a story in which an aid group in Nigeria distributed a superior strand of cassava seeds, a staple crop raised by women. The crop eventually became so profitable that men took it over and spent the profits on beer. The project failed.

But, the authors stress, compared with the 1960s, “an extra 10 million children survive each year now, an extra 100 million per decade,” due to projects like vaccination and rehydration for diarrhea. The financial investment the U.S. made into smallpox vaccinations was returned both financially and in some 45 million lives.

Ann and Angeline. The authors introduce Angeline Mugwendere, who grew up in Zimbabwe going to school wearing only a ratty dress with nothing underneath. She washed dishes at teachers’ house in exchange for gifts, like a pen. In her sixth-grade exams, she earned one of the highest scores in Zimbabwe, yet couldn’t afford to pay for the next year. Here, the authors introduce Ann Cotton, a Welsh woman whose baby daughter died at seven weeks from a lung disease, the greatest pain in Ann’s life. After having more children, Ann went on a masters program trip to Zimbabwe, where she realized that poverty, not cultural attitudes, was the main obstacle to sending girls to school. In the village of Mola, she met two girls living in a makeshift hut sixty miles from home so they could go to the cheaper school in Mola. Their struggle reminded her of her grandmother’s hardships in Wales, and she was moved to raised funds upon returning home. After struggling to sell cakes at a market stall, she managed to found an organization called the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed). She funded the schooling of Angeline, who excelled as expected.

Kristof and WuDunn report Camfed as now helping 400,000 students a year attend school, with only local staff on the ground and much local enthusiasm. What’s more, Camfed’s brand is wholly about the students, not about Ann or even her baby, who inspired her work. The authors are explicit that they highlight Camfed as evidence that aid groups should “focus less on holding conventions or lobbying for new laws, and more time in places like rural Zimbabwe, listening to communities,” and sending girls to school. A major problem Camfed has faced is sexual abuse from principals who barter high grades for scholarships, a problem they addressed by having local committees award scholarships. In addition to providing pads, underwear, and other resources, Camfed even supports girls post-graduation with vocational resources. What’s more, alumni have formed advocacy groups, some even becoming philanthropists, despite their small incomes (by Western standards). The authors close the chapter by circling back to Angeline, who is now the executive director of Camfed in Zimbabwe.