Report from Santa Fe; Nicholas Kristof

You You Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by

grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico. An organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Nicholas Christoff. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure, Lorraine. Well, you're here to talk about your new book called Half of the Sky. And tell us the subtitle. It's turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. And it's such a call to action. It is really a fantastic book. You're here actually as a guest of the Santa Fe International Folk Market, which does so much in helping empowering women, artists, and artisans to actually really be well paid for their work. That's right. I mean, we wrote Half of the Sky as kind of a do -it -yourself guide to foreign affairs, how people could go out and make a difference around the world supporting women. But I really didn't need to come to Santa Fe because you folks are

already doing just that. Well, you're a pioneer. You're ahead of us, urging us on. And so it's perfect that you be here. Let's just take a minute and look at your background because this book is co -written with your wife, Cheryl Wudun. That's right. I only hold up one quarter of the sky. She has the other quarter. And together, you're the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. And as you've traveled all over the world, you actually were living in China together at the time of the Tiananmen Square. That's right. And in fact, it was to some degree that really partly became the genesis of this book and of our interest in this issue. We covered Tiananmen Square. It was a milestone in our careers. We were the correspondence for the New York Times. We could not write an article there for a while. It wasn't on the front page. And about 500 people died at Tiananmen. I was there. I saw it. It was absolutely awful. But we realized that every year, year

in, year out in China, 39 ,000 baby girls died. It just the first year of life because they didn't get the same access to food and health care as boys. They were discriminated against the death. And overall, there were several tens of millions of Chinese women who had been discriminated against the death. And we had never given one column inch to those women. And so the more we began to think about it, the more we began to think that maybe there was something profoundly missing from our journalism, and the more we began to look at the issue of gender and women around the world, the more, I mean, just the more there was to write, the more we really began to see that this was, it seems to us fundamentally, the issue of this century. You had mentioned at some point, I read that you said, a journalist will write about what happened one day, but often they miss what happens every day. That's exactly right. That's, I think, one of the real flaws that we're good at covering, you know, what happened yesterday, but things that happen every day because they're never exactly news, we don't cover them. And the

things that happen to women around the world from the negative things, from, you know, sexual trafficking that exists on a bigger scale than slavery did in the 19th century, to acid attacks, burnings, I mean, just the whole range of things. Honor killing is female genital cutting. Maternal mortality. But there's also, I mean, I think there's some danger that we kind of psych ourselves out with all the awful things that happen. And the other side of the coin is, in a sense, women aren't the problem, they're the solution. If you want to address global poverty, if you want to address civil conflict, corruption, so many of the world's problems, then the most cost effective way of doing that is to educate girls, bring them into the formal labor forest, bring them out of the margins of society and into the center, and it just has this transformative effect on countries. It's actually called the girl effect. The girl effect, exactly. Yeah, would you tell them what the girl effect is?

Well, it is this notion that so many of the countries that have profound problems with poverty, with civil conflict, are those that marginalize girls and women that don't allow them to be used in the economy, that don't allow them to play a role in society or in the family, and that when you educate those girls, then it's not just a matter of what is right or of justice, but it's also a matter of utilizing one of the few resources that those countries have. If you look at poor countries, the greatest unexplored resource they have isn't gold or diamonds, it's the female halves of their population. You know, some of our other favorite writers and leaders are walking the same road as you are, certainly Greg Mortensen with his stones into schools and three cups of tea. Dr. Jane Goodall herself does a lot of work a program called Take Care, where she works being sure that the women get an education surrounding, it's true she works for the chimpanzees, but also she makes sure that all the people around there particularly the

women. And Eve Ansler, this marvelous woman always fighting for girls and to - Especially in the Congo, she has done an unbelievable job in the rape capital of the world. But I think more and more people are waking up to this, and I should say that Cheryl and I weren't far from the first people, and we noticed this, but it took us a while to notice. But I think that people are waking up to it just because there's more and more empirical evidence that that is where you get the bang for the buck. And, you know, if you try to deal with runaway population growth, which is a huge problem in the developing world. If you educate a man, he will have marginally fewer children, but it's a modest effect. If you educate a girl, she will have significantly fewer children. You just get more bang for the buck. Likewise, one of the dirty little secrets of global poverty is that, well, education lets people earn more money. And one of the problems is that men, when they earn more money, frankly, a certain amount of it goes not toward their children in order to raise and living standards. It goes toward alcohol,

prostitution, sugary drinks, extravagances. And if you could put that earning capacity in the hands of women, the money that they earn is more likely to go to educate their children to start small businesses. And so it's just, you know, putting aside what is right, this is also just what works. You had, you've been described by some as one of the more moral journalists, I think Jeff Tubenhead said. He wasn't surprised that you were one of our more moral journalists, but he was surprised that you were the Indiana Jones of contemporary journalists. Because you do travel all over the world. And even President Clinton said how much he owes to you personally for being on the ground in the back roads living with poor people and finding out what's really going on. I think that my inclination to go travel really arose when I was living in China, covering China. And I would look at reporting that was done from, you know, say

people in Washington talking to experts, talking to diplomats. And so often it just seemed, you know, to sort of be reporting from this echo chamber and really far removed from what is actually happening. And again, I think covering Iraq in the run up to the war, I was able to get to Iraq, talk to people. And it just makes such a difference to actually get out of the capital, talk to real people, get a sense of the mood of a place, and go out and, you know, kick tires. And so, unfortunately, I mean, I really wish that I didn't have this e -thought because it would be a lot more fun to sit in New York and, you know, and pontificate. But I really believe that that is the heart of reporting is to go out and report bear witness, if you will. And thanks to our wonderful communications, you have a blog called on the ground. And you also do videos. You do videos when you talk about if the man in the family has the money, he might be alcohol and cigarettes. And you interview somebody, yeah, he's got four kids. And he is spending on booze, on beer, just the same amount it would be to

educate his kids and he's not doing it. I mean, there's the guy looking at you. Yeah, I really try to, you know, spread the word to new constituencies. And especially young people, I think, often tune in more to videos than they do to the op -ed page of the New York Times, which is my nominal home. And so, for the same reason, I focus on Twitter, on Facebook, because it's just a way of, kind of, grabbing new audiences and trying to reach them and make them maybe interested in issues that I care passionately about. And these videos, the video clips are about 10 minutes long, but they're not just preachy. There were these African women teaching you to carry a huge thing of water on your head. That was really humbling, because I turned out to be the world's worst water carryer. And, I mean, the larger point there was that women in Africa do so much of the hard labor. And so, in that case, in Congo, I just stopped swimming

and asked them, you know, how you go about lifting things. And at first, they were kind of hard -estruck that I wanted to carry their load, but then they let me, and they just thought it was the funniest thing in the world to see a man actually doing some work. Well, I wanted to really share the joy that is in your book, because you have said that the moral crisis of the 19th century was slavery. And the 20th century was a response to totalitarianism. But now the crisis for us in the 21st century is gender equity, gender equality. And you also do parallels with the abolitionists, and then with Rachel Carson and the environmental movement. And then who is coming forth? You are now. And one of my favorite parts of the book is that at the end of it, you say, what you can do? Because people will sometimes read something, I'm just this person sitting here, what can I do? And you give them a list of what they can do. And then the last part is, this is what you can do in the next 10 minutes. And it's easy. You go to your

computer, you make a phone call, and you can make a difference. And what always strikes me is that I think people start out doing these things, and they think they're going to empower women in Rwanda or Guatemala, wherever it may be. And then they gradually find that they're actually empowering themselves, and that it's doing these things, especially if it's not just writing checks, but it's something beyond that it's volunteering, idealates going out and visiting a project that one has helped shape. That it just gives you a sense of greater meaning. It gives you another pillar of your life. And this sounds totally trite, but it is just so true. And one of the ways we wrote half the sky was that we wrote a lot about women abroad doing extraordinary things. But we tried to couple each chapter with a group of American women, or Americans, off typically women, but not always, who had started some local organizations, done something to help people abroad. And it was just so striking how so many of these people started out thinking this is going to be a burden,

and then just realized this is the best thing to do for themselves. Yes, certainly. They're more alive, they're thrilled, and then that magnetism draws more people to help their cause. Exactly. And one of the most exciting things for Cheryl and me has been the way book clubs with half the sky, for example, have often, after reading half the sky, I've then turned into giving clubs or have started some kind of a broader effort to try to make a difference somewhere, whether it's sponsoring people abroad or supporting a school abroad or whatever it may be, but have really tried to wait into this territory themselves. One of my favorite people, and she's been on Oprah, you've been on Oprah, you've been spotlighted by Oprah, you and your wife. But Terrier, Terrier, trans? Terrier, right, trans. Yeah, she was this woman in Zimbabwe. You tell the story, it's just the most inspiring story. Terrier is, I mean, there's so many of those women in the half the sky were just really my heroes, but she

really is one. She is a girl who grew up in Zimbabwe, was a brilliant student, but wasn't allowed by her father to study. Because, yeah, that's not what girls needed to do. And so she was pulled out of school, married to a jerk, essentially. But just one thing about her schooling, she's so wanted to learn that she did her brother's homework for him. And it would get perfect marks, and yet the guy, the brother in class, was kind of dumb and the handwriting didn't match. And the teacher finally went to the dad and said, your kid is brilliant. Please let her come to school. That's exactly right. But instead she got married off at the tender age of about 13 or something. Yeah, she doesn't exactly know her age, but then her husband wouldn't let her even read anything to keep up her abilities. But then at one point in the head of Heffer International, when it was passing through Zimbabwe and met a group of village women, including Terrier, right?

And told these women, you know, you can have dreams. You can do things that are transformative and suggested that you write down your dream and work to make it happen. Do you remember? They said they didn't even know that they had a dream, that they were allowed to have a dream. Yeah, they couldn't imagine really what this might be. But something in this stirred with terror, Ryan. And she wrote down on a piece of paper in the Shona language, her language, that her three dreams were to go abroad to study, to earn a college degree, and then to earn a PhD. And how she even knew what a PhD is. But so she wrote these down and buried them in a tin can in the field where she was hurting cattle. And then she asked some of the aid workers, you know, how she might keep up her learning a little bit. And they helped her study a little bit, and then she

took a correspondence course. And she's truly a brilliant woman. She's intellectually just unbelievably smart. And so she did really, really well in her studies, and kept doing better and better, and finally left her husband, so he would stop beating her for studying. And then was accepted to come to university in the US, and earned her BA, you know, while working, I don't know how many hours a week. And raising five children. You know, she's extraordinary woman, and then goes back and digs up her tin can and checks off the first goal, and goes back. And she earns her undergrad degree, goes back, digs up the can, checks it off, and just last December, she earned her PhD, and she's now a doctor, terror eye trend. And boy, I mean, you know, I just never know. You know, none of us are ever entitled to complain about anything. Anything, yeah. But it also, I mean, it's obviously

wonderful for terror eye, but it's also, you know, a reminder that people like her, these geniuses who end up as cattle her, it's also an incredible waste of resources for the country, for Africa and for the world. And with a little, with a modest degree of help, she was allowed to live up to her capacity in ways that she's now devoting her career to fighting AIDS in Africa. You know, that it really gonna make a difference in the world. Well, the book is full of wonderful stories like that, but that one is just dazzling. I do want to mention that organization Heifer International, HEIFER, because through this organization, you can contribute a farm animal to a poor family or a community, and it has made a huge amount of difference. Again, on Oprah, they had a girl whose family was given one goat, and through the extra money from that goat, they were able to send the first girl, not only to elementary school, not only to high school, but the first girl from the village ever go to college. That's right, Beatrice Birra, she's actually,

she was not in the hard back of our book, but we added her to the paperback that you have there, and she's unbelievable. Women, she just graduated from Connecticut College, and you know, again, she had her graduation party, she said, I'm the luckiest girl in the world, and it's all because of a goat. Name's luck, we might ask. Yes, that's right. I just, I love your columns, you write weekly in the New York Times. Twice a week, every Thursday and Sunday. Oh, twice a week, good. And so you had one around Father's Day, and I want to extend our condolences on the loss of your wonderful father. What a great man, what a history, and you do stand on the shoulders of giants. I know the one of the quotes that you've had that, I think we talked about it earlier, if man has created science and the arts and the material level we live on, how can we not think that he can then solve? Yeah, that he cannot

create peace, fraternity, and I should know this. I know. I feel like an unfilial son. The full quote is that something to the effect that war, want, and concentration camps, these taught me to hate strife among men, but still to believe in the possibility of humanity. After everything he'd been through, why should man who's been able to create arts and sciences? And material civilization. Why should he be judge powerless? To create justice, fraternity, and peace. And that's, you know, I mean... He wrote that in his eighth language. Yes, yes. He was an incredible, incredible man. And because I think he had seen a great deal of, and encountered a great deal of injustice in the world, he was deeply committed to giving back to helping others in two justice. And, you know, I like to think that I learned something about that. I think, I think I know he's very, very proud of you. I know you recently lost him, and this last father's day, you did have a column this

father's day that is one of my favorite you've ever read. And it written, it's called, that'll really like this. And you suggest, instead of the $9 .8 billion that Americans spend on father's day gifts, which are usually not of the first water, are neckties and wrench sets and things like that, that they invest in one of these programs like these three -foot -long African -pouched landmine -sniffing tuberculosis -detecting rats. That's right, yeah. There's a site called globalgiving .org, and it's a way of you can go on to it and you give whatever some of money it goes to a good cause somewhere. And one that has really intrigued me is these rats. And they're, you know, they're just what any good macho dad would want because they're two and a half feet long. They're, you know, they're infinitely more masculine as some tie. And they, as you say, they are really good at

sniffing tuberculosis. They're much better than looking through a microscope and determining tuberculosis. So they'll take Sputum from a whole village, and the rats will detect who's got TB. Exactly. And it's, I think, and I forget the number of, like, 10 minutes they can do what a human can do in a full day of work with a microscope. And they also are really good at sniffing landmines. And of course, they're light enough. They don't sit off the landmines. So they're, and, you know, for, I think, $36 a day, you can have a year supply, a year, you can supply a year supply of food bananas for these. And they're clearing huge tracks of land where, you know, it's always the kids and the poor people who get their leg blown off. It's not the real enemy. And so this is a wonderful cause. You also had mentioned that $9 .8 billion, which we spend on Father's Day, for our beloved fathers, would be enough to educate every child on the planet through primary school. One of the things we really learned in writing half the sky is that, you know, helping people is hard. It foreign aid is harder than it looks. So there are a lot of things that don't work very well.

And I think it's important to acknowledge that. But while there's no magic bullet in development or in fighting poverty, maybe the thing that has the best record of all is education. And it's also incredibly cheap. It is transformative. I wish that in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, we were doing more to fight extremism, not just with gun chives, but with schools. Well, General Patrice, who's now back in charge, has worked with Greg Mortensen, and has learned from him about including the elders and the value of education. Because if our goal there is anti -terrorist, since a mom has to give a young terrorist permission to go on Jihad, an educated mom is not going to say, go blow yourself up. An educated mom is going to say there's another way to do this. And so it really is one of the most anti -terrorist things we could do. That's right. And there's such needs all over the world. We plowed some of the

royalties for half the sky into building a school in Cambodia where the issue was less terrorism than keeping girls out of brothels, out of being sold to the brothels. And I've got to say that one of the things that always frustrates me the most when I go to Pakistan is you see these Wahabi fundamentalist madrasas that have been built by extremists, and they believe in the transformative power of education. And we don't build schools to counter those. And if we just had the same faith in the power of education that 13th century Wahabi fundamentalist did, it would have a major impact on countries like Pakistan. You know, we're running out of time. And there's so much more that I wanted to talk with you about. The maternity issue is so important. Microfinancing. You know, that gentleman got the Nobel Prize for promoting. Just give us the one sentence, why microfinancing is so important. You give an example of a woman in Pakistan who borrowed. She borrowed $65 and started an embroidery business. And

then she ended up basically building an industry for the entire village. And then that money was used to then educate her children and other children. And all because of a $65 loan. And it doesn't work perfectly all the time. But it's one of the tools that we're coming to understand better. And you know, coupled with this basic realization that if you work through women, that is transformative. Now, I again want to tell people to get this book. You know, people are giving this away just like people used to give away three cups of tea. It's called Half the Sky. And so in the time that remains, tell us what people can do. Besides reading the book and then, you know, looking at the back, oh, I could make this call, I could go to this website. But also, we have to embrace that there are some difficult things in the world. And that we really can make a difference. I think that that is one of the crucial things. I think that often we cycle ourselves out by thinking, you know, it's terrible what goes on.

But that's life. That's the way poverty works. And people think that they can't change the world. Now, it's true that any given viewer right now is not going to single -handedly solve any of these problems. But I think what we're getting better at understanding is we may not solve the global problem. But we can make a real difference for a real community similar. And you can go out and you can sponsor a third -grade class, and a particularly refugee camp similar. And for those kids, that is a complete change in their possibilities. And so in the back of Half the Sky, we list a bunch of organizations that are doing just fantastic work, whether in maternal mortality, in human trafficking, in sponsorship efforts. And we really encourage people to sort of browse through, find an organization that speaks to them, and jump in. And you know, you'll make a huge difference for other people. But I think you'll also get a little extra meaning for yourself. You also urge people

to not only take their kids to London and Paris, but to take them to India and to Pakistan and to China. And just on the long side of the tracks in their own town. Absolutely. You know, I think we all want to teach our kids values, but the teaching doesn't come from what we say. It comes from kids modeling our behavior. And I also think it's frankly, it's really hard to connect with these issues intellectually. You know, you can know that girls are kidnapped and locked up in brothels. And you know that intellectually it's slavery. But until you actually go and see them and talk to them, that's what completely changes you. And I think it would be wonderful if more young Americans had a chance to go and see some of these realities and connect with them emotionally in a way that I think would truly change their lives. And these are little kids. And they're imprisoned, they're fed drugs, they're made to be addicted to drugs. They're fed hardly any food so that they'll stay so skinny. I mean, it really is

tragic. And any, you know, again, the mom in all of us just says, well, you know, we've got to take care of these kids. And so we applaud your efforts for the girl effect that such a difference can be made. Do you have one last word for our audience about how do you empower the normal person sitting there? Say, you, you personally, you yourself can make such a difference in the world. I think my recommendation for somebody who wants to do something would be to, you know, to look at the issues that you care about. I mean, if it's, if it's in half the sky, try to figure out whether you care more about maternal health, or about sexual violence, or about trafficking, or whatever it may be. And but choose one issue that is particularly important to you. Research it, look at the organizations in that space, figure out maybe what continent you're more interested in making a difference in. And then don't spread your efforts thin, but really focus on one. And don't just, I mean, I can writing text and be part of it. But ideally, also, violence here, if you can travel, connect with people who are working on this, in this place. But really go

deeply into that one area, and you can truly make a difference for people. And the truth is what you're saying is that the more you give, really, on many levels, the more you will truly receive. And so I want to thank you for coming, for giving us this book, and for giving us such wise counsel. Again, the book, Half the Sky, the subtitling? Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. Yes, this is a glorious opportunity. I urge everyone to read this. Our guest today is Nicholas Kreesoff. Thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd love to thank you our audience for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. To believe that investing in public education is an investment in our

state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. You You You

You You You

You You You

You You

You You You

You You You You You

You You You You

You You You You

You You