[Expositions 5.2 (2011) 71-72]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747-5376 

Introduction to the Academic Roundtable: Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl 

WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women 

Worldwide 

GREGORY HOSKINS 

Villanova University 

 

“Women hold up half the sky.” – Chinese Proverb 

 

 

The topic of discussion for this Academic Roundtable is Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl 

WuDunn’s 2009 work of what is perhaps best described as “advocacy journalism:” Half the Sky: 

Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. In this work, Kristof (currently an 

op-ed columnist for the New York Times) and WuDunn (a former foreign affairs correspondent 

for the New York Times and currently an investment advisor with a focus on philanthropy) 

leverage their cultural authority to the “incipient movement to emancipate women and fight 

global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts” (Kristof and WuDunn 2009, 

xxii). The book is only one part of their efforts, which also include a website 

(www.halftheskymovement.org) that contains additional success stories, links to groups that 

support women in developing countries, and an active forum for information sharing.  

The four participants in the roundtable – Christina Morus (The Richard Stockton College of 

New Jersey), Sally Scholz (Villanova University), Maurice Hamington (Metropolitan State 

College of Denver), and Amy Ross (University of Georgia) – have at least two things in 

common. First, they share with each other, and with Kristof and WuDunn, a commitment to 

improving the lives of women and girls worldwide. But, second, they are each not a part of the 

target audience of Kristof and WuDunn’s book. As Scholz notes in her contribution, the authors 

are writing for an audience for whom these issues are new, and who thus need to be both 

informed about the violence, oppression, demoralization and degradation that many women and 

girls face daily and encouraged to make some first step, however small, towards solving these 

problems (Scholz 2011, x-x). For the participants, there is nothing “incipient” about this 

movement; it has been going on for centuries and they each have been working at it for years 

both inside and outside of the academy. Nonetheless, the participants do not dismiss Kristof and 

WuDunn’s work. Rather, by discussing Kristof and WuDunn’s book in relation to their own 

expertise and experience – in relation to the rhetoric of persuasion in an individualistic culture 

(Morus), to the need for solidarities and an awareness of the achievements of feminism (Scholz), 

to the nature of an ethics of care (Hamington), and to a critique of humanitarianism in an age of 

neo-liberalism (Ross) – they each in effect expand the potential audience and the range of useful 

and needed actions in the worldwide movement to turn oppression into opportunity for women.  

 



Introduction to the Academic Roundtable  72 

 

Works Cited 
 

Kristof, Nicholas D. and Sheryl WuDunn. 2009.  Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into 

Opportunity for Women Worldwide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.