Half the Sky

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24 January 2013 “Half the Sky” Summarization In the book “Half the Sky Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn claim that solutions such as girls’ education and microfinance help to solve the problem of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence and maternal mortality. The authors introduce us to the problems of forced prostitution by depicting the story of Srey Rath, a Cambodian teenager who at the age of fifteen decided to go work as a dishwasher in Thailand to help pay the bills of the family. Srey was traveling with four friends who had all been promised jobs at the same restaurant. In the beginning, the girls were taken deep into Thailand by the job agent and handed over to gangsters who took the girls to Kuala Lumpur. They were dazzled by the big buildings and bright lights of the big city. The girls were then sequestered in a brothel. A gangster known as “the boss” explained to them how he had paid money for them and that they would have to work to pay off their debt before they were sent home. Srey was devastated when she realized what was happening. He locked her in a room with a customer and she fought back, angering the customer. “The boss” was very angry and hit Srey, leaving a welt on her face; she was then raped and beaten. To keep her compliant, she was forced to take a pill known as “the happy drug.” Along with her fellow captives, Srey was kept naked and forced to work seven days a week, fifteen hours a day. They were fed scarce amounts of food as customers were dissatisfied with overweight girls. One night some of the girls made a daring escape from the tenth floor apartment that they were housed in, going out onto the balcony to traverse a thin five inch plank across the twelve foot wide chasm between buildings to a balcony on a neighboring building. After escaping, Srey was picked up by the police and

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