Half the Sky - politics of representation in academia

In Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s, “Half the Sky”, they write about various sources of oppression for women across the world. One major issue they expose is sex trafficking, specifically in South East Asia and India. Their chapter on sex trafficking is comprised of the stories of several girls who were trafficked from rural regions into larger cities under the guise of new economic opportunities. The book opens with the story of Srey Nath, a young Cambodian girl who was forced to work as a prostitute in a Thai brothel for several months before her eventual escape. It subsequently tells the stories of several other girls of varying backgrounds with stories similar to Srey Nath’s, highlighting the issues of abuse, drugs, and disease that many girls who are trafficked face.

Although Kristoff and WuDunn emphasize that these stories are meant to serve as reminders that girls can overcome their tragedies and plights, the manner in which they tell the stories and even their selection of which stories to tell is a questionable abuse of their power of representation and ultimately does a disservice to both those who are victims of trafficking and those who agentively participate in sex work. Kristoff and Dunn write that girls can transcend being mere baubles or slaves and even run businesses so long as they are given a chance in the form of an education or microloan. This statement alone is an oversimplification of the plight these girls face and is awash in savior complex, but any genuineness it had is further weakened by the explicit detail they allow for the abuse and horrors that those who are trafficked face. The amount of space given to describe the assault and abuse endured by the girls they write about is contradictory to their touted goals of empowering victims of trafficking. Their attitude also blatantly ignores the large number of women who willingly chose to participate in sex work for economic reasons, who are not ‘baubles or slaves’ but women making active decisions in their own lives.

Reading this section of Kristoff and WuDunn’s book raises important questions about the power of representation that scholars hold when writing about traumatic issues such as trafficking. These criticisms are not meant to label Kristoff and WuDunn as bad people with bad intentions, they do effectively raise awareness of many plights faced by women worldwide, but they ultimately engage in a diminution of agency that that runs counter to their stated goals. It is important to recognize the agency that both those who are trafficked and those who willingly participate in sex work hold, and to keep that agency in mind as we consume and contribute to academia on the topic.