(Courtesy photo) America Ferrera plays with children at the New Light Crèche in Kolkata, India.
Television » PBS documentary highlights efforts to stop abuse of women and girls.
By Scott D. Pierce
The Salt Lake Tribune
When Meg Ryan agreed to participate in the PBS
documentary "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for
Women Worldwide," she wasn’t entirely prepared for what she was getting
into.
Traveling to Cambodia, Ryan met Somana Long, a
young woman who had been sold into prostitution when she was 13 and who
got pregnant shortly thereafter.
"That morning she gave birth to her baby," Ryan
said, "and that afternoon she was expected to service a client. She
refused, and they gouged her eye out."
It’s horrifying. Hard to watch. But the point
of "Half the Sky" is not just the horrific trials women encounter around
the world, it’s how they rise above them.
"You’ll see in the show this unbelievably
beautiful spirit," Ryan said. "This incredible little face with no eye —
this hole in her face from saying, ‘No.’ "
"Half the Sky" was inspired by the 2009 book of
the same title by the husband-wife team of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl
WuDunn. The authors chronicled sex trafficking, maternal mortality,
sexual violence and oppression around the world.
"This isn’t just an issue of really depressing
things happening around the world," Kristof said, "because side by side
with the worst of humanity, you encounter the very best. So you have
people who reinforce the human capacity for forgiveness, for altruism,
for courage, for bringing about change.
"It’s possible to come back from the brothels in Cambodia really feeling pretty good about humanity."
Kristof himself has made some individual
efforts. Like when he spent $350 to buy two young girls out of a
Cambodian brothel in 2004. And he readily admits that Half the Sky is
advocacy journalism.
"Essentially, we wrote the book and we did this
[documentary] not just to inform people, but, hopefully, to build a
certain sense of outrage and a sense that one can make a difference," he
said.
"Sheryl and I have found that, in general, we don’t become engaged with
these issues because we learn about them intellectually. It’s because of
the encounters we have, the people we meet, the experiences we have or,
ideally, the shows we watch."
Oscar nominee Diane Lane said she got involved
with the documentary after reading the book. She traveled with Kristof
to Somalia, where 1 in 12 women dies in childbirth due to poor nutrition
and the effects of female genital mutilation.
Lane said she was inspired by Edna Adan, the
former foreign minister of the autonomous Somaliland region, who has
worked tirelessly to improve the lives of women.
"I never thought I’d be standing there cutting
an umbilical cord in her hospital," Lane said. "But thank you for that
experience. And it will live with me forever."
America Ferrera ("Ugly Betty") traveled to
India, where it is estimated that 90 percent of sex workers’ daughters
follow them into prostitution — and there are an estimated 1.2 million
child prostitutes. She met Urmi Basu, an upper-class Indian woman who
was so appalled by this she has devoted herself to helping girls and
women escape the cycle.
"Urmi had a choice to lead a very different
life and walked through an alley and saw a need," Ferrera said. "She
could have walked out of that alley and never looked back and no one
would have blamed her. But instead, she saw a need and realized that she
had the potential to meet that need, and she did."
While "Half the Sky" features women in far-away countries, the stories resonate for American viewers.
"These are very extreme stories you’re going to
see," Ryan said. "But the bridge between the first and the third worlds
is not as long as we think. Any time I haven’t spoken up for myself, I
can see the same thing in the eyes of a little girl in Cambodia. It’s a
human experience."
And for Ferrera, whose parents immigrated to
the United States from Honduras, this is a "there but for the grace of
God go I" story.
"It takes very little imagination to put
yourself in somebody else’s shoes," she said, "or at least see your own
children in some of these faces and say, ‘What’s the difference between
me and that person other than I got lucky and they didn’t?’ "
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