Half the Sky: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Prohibition and Prostitution. The chapter begins at a bustling border village between India and Nepal, where thousands of Nepali girls are trafficked. Kristof strikes up a conversation with an Indian intelligence officer, who says he is monitoring the border for stolen goods as well as terrorist suspects, as security has increased since 9/11. Kristof asks if he also looks for trafficked girls, at which the officer chuckles and says that prostitution is unfortunate but inevitable. Plus, the officer adds, trafficking peasant girls keeps “good” middle-class girls safe.

The authors write that modern slavery exists for the same reason African American slavery existed: slaves are considered subhuman. It’s possible to end modern slavery, they argue, “but the political will is lacking.” Western societies are not culpable for this slavery, since most Western men who patronize prostitutes do not go to brothels, they explain. Rather, the authors call for the West to act because its “action is necessary to overcome a horrific evil.”

While there have been successful U.S. bipartisan efforts to raise awareness of sex trafficking, the authors write, generally the issue has been divisive, which has weakened the modern abolitionist movement. They explain that the U.S. left is less judgmental of sex workers, while the right views all prostitution as demeaning. These are ideological differences that keep party members from collaborating to solve the injustices they all condemn.

Kristof and WuDunn pose the question, what policy would end slavery? They explain that, at first, they believed that legalization and regulation of prostitution would be better than flat-out prohibition, but their views evolved—now they think prohibition is best, a stance supported by empirical evidence. Crackdowns on brothel operations, when paired with rehabilitation services for former prostitutes, can largely succeed, they argue.

Kristof and WuDunn write about a crowded, sprawling network of brothers in Kolkata, India, called Sonagachi, often cited as a successful example of legalized and regulated brothel operations. A sex worker union called Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) was founded there in the 1990s, encouraged the use of condoms, lowered the AIDS rate, supposedly blocked forced prostitution, and even began giving tours of Sonagachi. Models like Sonagachi, they mention, have the indirect support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Yet, further examination shows that Sonagachi’s success is more modest than advertised. Kristof and WuDunn acknowledge that, after Kristof criticized Sonagachi, liberals in India accused him of undermining the self-ownership of sex workers, who are trying to make better lives for themselves. One liberal wrote, “Your stance . . . smacks of the Western missionary position of rescuing brown savages from their fate.” But, the authors argue, many sex workers in Kolkata have contrary views.

Kristof and WuDunn introduce the reader New Light, an organization that supports current and former sex workers, and to Geeta Ghosh. Geeta has seen a very different side of Sonagachi, they write, and was kidnapped as a child by a trusted woman, enslaved at twelve, kept in a room, and raped for a month by the same man. She worked for years under the threat of execution. Her experience is not uncommon—the authors write about a Yale researcher who researched and toured Sonagachi, and was told that most sex workers were in fact trafficked, and that customers could spend a few extra pennies to not wear a condom.

The authors examine different approaches to prostitution in order to assess what they call the “legalize-and-regulate” model vs. the “big-stick approach,” with prohibition enforced by crackdowns. While Sonagachi did curb AIDS slightly, a more successful reduction happened in Mumbai, the authors explain, where numbers of prostitutes have fallen dramatically in recent years, partly due to American pressure for crackdowns—the big stick approach. The authors use the Netherlands and Sweden as another illustration of regulation vs. prohibition. The Netherlands legalized prostitution for the sake of sex workers’ health and safety in 2000, they write, while in 1999 Sweden criminalized buying sexual services, but not sex work itself, reflecting the view that prostitutes are likely victims, not criminals. Sweden’s crackdowns had more success, driving down the price of sex services and discouraging traffickers. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, Amsterdam has become a sex tourism destination with many trafficked prostitutes, the authors report, and there’s no evidence that STDs or HIV rates have decreased.

In the developing world, this debate is mostly a distraction, the authors argue, because the establishment of laws doesn’t guarantee that governments will actually enforce those laws. Only in recent years have U.S. embassies gathered information on trafficking (in a document called the Trafficking in Persons, or TIP, report), and the issue needs to feature on the international agenda, holding countries to much higher standards for crackdowns. The big-stick approach should focus on punishing men in Asia who purchase virgins, they argue, which would have a positive domino effect. Further, the authors point out that crackdowns have already had success in parts of Cambodia, after data on trafficking led to shaming of the Cambodian government—there, finding a young girl showcased in a brothel window is less common now than it used to be.

Rescuing Girls is the Easy Part. Kristof and WuDunn begin by saying they became slave owners by simply paying cash in exchange for two young women. But rescuing girls, they write, is easy, while preventing them from returning to brothels is hard. Their unexpected purchases happened when Kristof was traveling as a correspondent in Cambodia, and stayed in a brothel in Poipet. With an interpreter, he interviewed two young women under the guise of hiring them, Srey Neth and Srey Momm.

Neth is a thin teenager in tight jeans and a pink t-shirt, nervous at being in the company of two men. In a monotone voice, she recounts her road to enslavement: a female cousin, telling the family Neth would be selling fruit, sold her to a brothel, who sold her as a virgin to a Thai man. Now she is trapped in the brothel, dead-eyed and prized for her light skin. With Neth’s consent, she and Kristof scheme for him to buy her, so that she can return home. For $150, she soon “belongs” to Kristof.

Kristof finds Srey Momm, a frail young girl, in a different brothel. In Kristof’s description, Momm vacillates between cheerful and hysterical, and pleads to be purchased and returned home. Kristof does just that, for $203.

Neth was welcomed back by her family, and opened a village store, her dream, while American Assistance for Cambodia kept an eye on her progress. Momm’s return home was, at first, jubilant, as her whole village flocks to her with cheers and embraces, and her mother sprinted a mile from work to greet her, sobbing. It was decided that Momm would rent a market stall, with help from the same American aid group, which went well at first. A week later, however, Kristof received the terrible news that Momm had a methamphetamine addiction, and had voluntarily returned to the brothel. American Assistance for Cambodia helped her twice more to establish a new life, but each time she returned. The next year, Kristof saw Momm in the same brothel, where she kneeled and begged forgiveness.

Neth and Momm illustrate, the writers argue, that many women live a blurred line between slavery and voluntary sex work. Over time, Momm’s role in the brothel leaned toward managerial, and soon she would be beating other girls. But she escaped that fate, as her brothel folded due to crackdowns and the cost of bribery. Suddenly, Momm was free. She married a former customer and settled into a better life.

Meanwhile, the authors write, Neth’s flourishing shop led to more competition in her village. But worse, men in her family, refusing to respect a young female entrepreneur, abused the shop, stealing as they wished, and finally raided it. Desperate to help her ailing father financially, Neth agreed to go with a trafficker to Thailand, where a job as dishwasher was promised. American Assistance for Cambodia, however, persuaded her not to—it was another trap for sex trafficking. Instead, the group found a reputable salon where Neth then studied hairdressing. All was going beautifully, when Neth’s health began to decline. She had HIV.

A young, educated suitor fell in love with Neth, and she fell in love with him. They soon began a loving marriage, but she never told him about her history in the brothel, or her HIV. Kristof and WuDunn, who maintained a friendship with Neth, describe their heartbreak at seeing Neth deceive her husband about a disease that endangered him and their baby, with whom she was pregnant. But, Neth finally agreed to take another HIV test, a more reliable one that came back negative. After her earlier suffering, Neth eventually had a healthy baby, a caring husband, and plans to open a beauty shop.

Kristof and WuDunn outline three lessons in this story. First, rescuing girls from brothels is a complex mission. Second, the difficulty should not make anyone forfeit the mission. Third, even if a problem is so formidable it can’t be eradicated, it’s worth mitigating. They end with a Hawaiian parable, in which a boy on a beach tosses washed up starfish back into the ocean. A nearby man says that there are too many starfish, and he’ll never make a difference. The boy responds, “It sure made a difference to that one.”