How to Get More Women to Join the Debate

By
Emma Pierson

When Dylan Farrow posted a letter on this blog accusing Woody Allen of sexual assault, female commenters overwhelmingly supported her; male commenters were evenly split.

These were among my findings when I studied nearly a million comments made on The New York Times website. Women and men differ substantially in how they engage with online media. And these differences may have profound implications for media, gender equality, and even our democracy.

Regardless of whether you believe Dylan Farrow’s story, the gender gap in sympathy (which several other studies have found as well) should trouble you. It implies that in Congress, the police, or the military, where women are underrepresented, opinions will be skewed against survivors of sexual assault. (The importance of equal representation applies to men as well, of course: we would not want sexual assault trials to have entirely female jurors.) And because men and women’s opinions differ in many other ways as well, the undemocratic implication is simple: when one gender is underrepresented, the views that are heard will not fairly represent the views that are held.

Women were clearly underrepresented in my data. They made only a quarter of comments, even though their comments got more recommendations from other readers on average. Even when they did speak up, they tended to cluster in stereotypically “female” areas: they were most common on articles about parenting, caring for the old, fashion and dining. (Women got more recommendations than men on most of the sports blogs, but they still made, for example, only 5 percent of comments on the soccer blog.)
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Winners of My Poetry Contest About Race

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Here are the winners of my poetry contest on race. Please post your comments on the poems — or on the column or the contest — below.

There was space in my Sunday column to run only excerpts of these winning poems, so these are the full versions. The first is by Carolyn Tillo, who attended a progressive high school in Jacksonville, Fla., with a diverse student body. “Everyone there was smart, and I would say, as different as we were, we all got along,” she said. “That’s why the cafeteria situation was so weird. We had these bright futures ahead of us, but at lunchtime, we stepped into what looked like the 1950s — rows of tables with white kids on one side of the room and black kids on the other.”

I learned about race in my high school cafeteria.
Whites sat on one side,
Blacks on the other.
It was a house
Divided.
We were smart kids enrolled in advanced courses,
But we didn’t know how to eat together.
Of course there were exceptions,
And we had friends of different races.
At the end of the day,
I wish I could say
This was in 1950.
But it was in 2005.
Can we talk of progress when we still sit at separate tables?
I wish I could go back in time,
And push all the cafeteria tables into
One table united.
Until the day comes when we can all sit down together,
We must stand up
And refuse to say,
“Everything is OK.”

Angel Butts said that her poem about Ferguson “captures a pivotal moment in my life — the one in which I realized that remaining silent had suddenly become more frightening than raising my voice.”

As Ferguson Burns

As Ferguson burns,
I hear the outrage of a people
with lives rendered valueless
once and for all.
A people with hearts that can bleed
onto the streets
without recourse.

As Ferguson burns,
I hear the anguish of a mother
twice destroyed.
First by one man, then by a country
whose justice
does not extend to her flesh.

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United Against the Taliban

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Editor’s Note: The author is a Pashtun woman in her early 20’s who lives in Peshawar. Her name is withheld for safety. 

I have heard my elders call Peshawar the city of flowers. But since Dec. 16, this feels like the city of the walking dead; a city whose flower-like children were crushed brutally when the Taliban attacked a school. At least 145 students and faculty members were killed in horrific ways; my tongue shivers to describe the atrocities. The death toll may be in hundreds but the entire city — the entire nation — feels like it lost its own loved ones.

The morning after Dec. 16 revealed the sight of funeral prayers everywhere. The students that survived were interviewed so much that they now plead not to be asked more questions as they get nightmares.

Occasional blasts and killings had become a part of life in Peshawar, but this is nothing like anything we know. It has been a week, yet no one can recover or function properly. Some call it a Black Day, while others call it the 9/11 of Pakistan. Whatever it was, it shook Pakistan at its core.
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The Fight to End the Lord’s Resistance Army Violence

By
Ben Keesey Invisible Children

The paradox of running a nonprofit is that the closer you get to achieving your mission, the closer you get to putting yourself out of a job. As the CEO of Invisible Children, a nonprofit working to end Africa’s longest running armed conflict, I’ve always looked forward to the day when our organization would no longer be needed. That day is close.

When we started Invisible Children in 2004, we believed that the atrocities of the Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A.) were so horrible, that there assuredly was some mechanism that existed from the “powers that be” to fix the problem as long as we told enough people. Looking back on this ten years later, I realize that this was very naive. We now know that solving any problem in this world takes the terribly hard, painstaking work of private individuals working on behalf of their sisters and brothers with incredible perseverance.

If you set out to change the world, I can assure you that you that it will be 1,000 times harder than you think. You will make mistakes. You won’t know how to get where you’re going. You probably won’t even know where to start. But that is the power of it all: you have to step into the scary unknown and learn along the way. This is why I have so much respect for the agents of change that have come before us, who have had to go through huge challenges and reinventions of their models to make the impact that they have.
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A Poetry Contest About Race

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Do you fancy yourself a poet? Then post a poem about race below as a comment, and I’ll pick the best ones and run them either in my column or in a new blog post.

I did this years ago, with a poetry contest about the Iraq war, and I found many of the poems very moving. Race likewise seems one of those topics that calls for the kind of soul-searching that poetry is well suited for. I’d also invite school or college classes to participate as an assignment; if I choose one of yours, I’ll give your school a shout-out.

Any kind of poem is fine, from haiku to epic, but it’s always easier to quote from shorter poems. Feel free to also say something about yourself and why you wrote the poem in your comment. I’ll give you a week to post entries, so the deadline is Dec. 18.

I’ve been writing often about race lately. You can read my series of columns about race, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” as well as my latest column, “What if Whites Were the Minority?” I’m not looking for poems that necessarily echo my views.

Update: The issue of profanity has been raised. Due to Times guidelines, we’ll have to reject poems that include profanity and don’t adhere to Times standards, so please avoid using it in your poems.

Win a Trip in 2015

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Play Video|2:09

Win a Trip 2015

Win a Trip 2015

The Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof invites students to enter a contest for an international reporting trip in 2015.

Video by Nicholas Kristof on December 6, 2014.

My Sunday column is my annual gift-giving guide, but at the end it also announces my next annual win-a-trip contest. Since 2006, I’ve been taking a student with me once a year on a reporting trip to the developing world. The aim is to generate interest in global poverty issues both with the contest and with the blogging and videos that the winner will contribute to the New York Times website. HBO did a documentary called “Reporter” based on my 2007 win-a-trip journey to Congo; it’s on Amazon and iTunes if you want to see what you’re getting yourself in for.

The full rules are here, but short version is that it is open to students enrolled in an American college or university, either as an undergraduate or graduate. You can submit an essay or video or both, essentially explaining why I should pick you. Please don’t gush about my reporting — just explain what you bring to the table. It might be that you’re a great writer or photographer, or it might be that you grew up poor and know something about poverty, or grew up rich and don’t know a thing about it. I’m not looking for expertise but for great communication skills so that your blogs and videos will make other students interested in these issues and generate some conversations. If you blog or have other writing or video experience, mention it and send links.

To enter, use this form at the Center for Global Development website. The center will help me winnow down the applicants to a much smaller pool of finalists, and then with the help of my assistant, Liriel Higa, I’ll choose the winner. Probably the aim will be to travel for about 10 days or two weeks in the late spring or early summer. I’ll try to work around your schedule, but if you know for sure you won’t be able to take the time off, then please don’t apply. Your expenses will be covered, but there’s no cash award. I’m not sure just where we’ll travel, but the two Congos, South Sudan, and India/Nepal are among the possibilities. If you speak French, mention that but it’s certainly not a requirement.
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Voluntourists Needed: Apply Within

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A young girl covers the eyes of a volunteer at Flying Kites in the Aberdares Mountains in Kenya. Kristen Kalp

Despite what I like to think, the charity I run is pretty small. If we ever have more than five people in our office, it’s because my mom is there, helping us connect the wireless printer. So when a producer from NPR called last year and asked to speak with “the woman from our organization who had written the blog about voluntoursim,” I had to fight the urge to pretend to be my own assistant. It’s part of our nonprofit DNA — the tendency to stand on our tiptoes. We want people to take us seriously; we want to be the exact opposite of volunteers.

After a long pause, I finally responded with the always-grammatically impressive: “This is she.” The producer introduced herself, explaining that she read my critique of “voluntourism” — the trend in travel towards volunteering abroad (privileged kids who hop on a plane to pet the poor) — and asked if I would be interested in joining them on a segment to share some of the pitfalls I had highlighted in my piece.

A few days later I found myself walking into the station, preparing to present my anti-voluntourism arguments. I reminded myself of the overall issues: Would we ever let teenage backpackers from Spain pop into our schools to teach for a few days? And what of these parents who spend thousands of dollars so that their kids can hand out crayons to hungry children in a poor village in Uganda? I tried to recall some of the worst voluntourists I had ever met, but they don’t really stick with me. Instead, I thought of all the young travelers I knew who had gone on to dedicate their lives to issues of social justice. I did my best, but found it hard to muster much conviction. It’s too easy to take a shot at the do-gooder who is just starting out.
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After Ferguson, When Will We Listen?

By
Jonathan L. Walton Justin Knight

The American justice system has proven time and again that if you are a person of color and/or poor in this country, your life does not matter as much. All one has to do is be suspicious and appear out of place — which is the definition of being poor and/or of color in our country — and state induced violence will always receive the benefit of the doubt.

Nearly sixty years after Roy Brant and J.W. Milam were acquitted of the murder of Emmett Till — a murder that the two subsequently confessed to Look Magazine for a reported payment of $4,000 — there remains great distrust of America’s justice system. Despite this widespread mistrust, there are those today, including the president of the United States, who are calling for “calm and peace.” Some appeal to the rule of law. Others cite Martin Luther King, Jr. and his philosophy of nonviolence. Really?

Let us consider the “rule of law.” What does this look like? The rule of law appears to condone shooting twelve bullets at an unarmed teenager for the crime of jaywalking. The rule of law takes the form of an officer intended to “protect and serve” referring to Michael Brown as “it” and “demon” in his grand jury testimony. And the rule of law calls for peace while clad in paramilitary gear tossing tear gas into nonviolent crowds.

Unfortunately, the rule of law enacted in Missouri today seems to harken back to 1857 when an enslaved Dred Scott sued the state for his freedom. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court where the majority ruled against Scott 7-2. In the words of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, “persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants … had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

This is the logic of white supremacy at work. The term cannot be reduced to images of burning crosses and Klan hoods. But rather, white supremacy is a logic through which social systems are implemented. It is a logic that regards white life as more valuable than non-white life, and equates whiteness with de facto innocence while imbuing blackness with presumed guilt. Then we wonder how George Zimmerman can get out of his car, pursue an unarmed Trayvon Martin, instigate a conflict, shoot him dead when the teen gets the best of him, and be found not guilty according to the “rule of law.” The implementation of “Stand Your Ground” is a course in White Supremacy 101.

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protests

Thoughts on Race in America, as a Backdrop to Ferguson

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Protesters face off with police outside the Ferguson Police Department on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014 in Ferguson, Mo. Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

With the renewed violence in Ferguson in light of a St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to bring charges against Darren Wilson, we’re once again caught in a painful debate about race in America today. Here are five articles I’ve written recently that may be useful in this conversation.

“Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist?,” written after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, looks at the widespread racism and stereotyping young black men face, by all society — including African-Americans themselves.

I wrote “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” and the Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 follow ups as a response to the skepticism and and eye-rolling I encountered from many whites after my initial column.

Later, the Washington Post ran this Q & A with me about the race series.

I welcome your thoughts.

Update: Here’s the latest in the series, When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5, calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on race, as well as a column on if whites were in the minority and another about Ian Manuel, a black man who has spent most of his life in prison, and whose white victim thinks he should be released.

Becoming the Symbol of Street Harassment

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I feel like the Mockingjay. For those of you who are not Hunger Games fans, Katniss, the protagonist in Suzanne Collins’ story, is thrust into being the face of the revolution. Katniss did not initially choose to present herself as the Mockingjay, a symbol of rebellion, but she agrees with the cause and does everything within her power to assist the group she believes in.

I myself became the symbol of street harassment when a video I participated in for Hollaback! went viral – with 36 million YouTube views since Oct. 28. Just like Katniss, I did not seek to become the symbol of this movement, but I am grateful to be a part of it. Katniss and I also share threats: Death, rape and anti-Semitic threats make up a portion of the feedback I have received. That is the most frightening part, and this backlash has me shaking just thinking about it. Some of the threats are vague and others extremely specific, with actions and dates on the calendar. I have tough skin and the absurd insults just make me roll my eyes, but when it comes to specific violent actions, I am incredibly scared. I have a right to feel safe, but I do not have the freedom to let my guard down for even a moment.

I have been asked if I regret my involvement with the catcalling video. My response is a warm smile and a loud, resounding “NO.” If I helped even one person, I am happy.
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“Please Don’t Abandon Me”

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Note: Asia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman, was sentenced to death for blasphemy against Islam in 2010. The year before, while picking fruit with Muslim women, she took a sip of water from the local well. She was immediately accused of making the water impure by ​the other workers, ​who told her that they could no longer use the well. A​ccording to her husband, Ashiq Masih, and others, men and women started beating her and accusing her of making derogatory remarks against the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a charge she denies. Asia is currently in prison waiting to be hanged after losing an appeal ​on ​Oct. 16. She has told her story in a memoir, Blasphemy: A Memoir: Sentenced to Death over a Cup of Water, written with French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet. 

Below is an open letter by Ashiq addressed to the world community. (Madam Mayor refers to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has offered her support to Asia.)

Ashiq Masih signs the letter.

Yesterday, I returned from the prison in Multan where my wife, Asia Bibi, was transferred eight months ago. Since Asia was sentenced to death in November 2010 for drinking a glass of water from our village well, my family has lived in constant fear and under death threats. I live in hiding with my five children as near as possible to Asia. She needs us very much to help keep her alive, to bring her medicine and good food when she is sick.

After my wife had spent four long years in prison in terrible conditions, we were hoping that the High Court of Lahore would free my wife. She did not commit blasphemy, never. Since the court confirmed the death sentence on the 16th of October, we do not understand why our country, our beloved Pakistan, is so against us. Our family has always lived here in peace, and we never had any disturbance. We are Christians but we respect Islam. Our neighbors are Muslims and we have always lived well with them in our little village. But for some years now the situation in Pakistan has changed because of just a few people, and we are afraid. Today many of our Muslim friends cannot understand why the Pakistani justice system is making our family suffer so much.

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Death Without Regrets

By
Bob Dickerson RESULTS/Lesley Reed

I think that few of us consider the impact of our daily activities on the final accounting anyone might render at the time of our death. Because I have had cancer for more than 15 years now, I have had a lot of time to think about this.

I actually think I got this cancer 35 years ago. It grows slowly, but it did take me to the hospital from time to time. And in September of 1999, I had my first CT scan, which gave me a confirmed diagnosis. My physician opined then – and later a second oncologist with a big reputation agreed – that I would live somewhere between 1 and 20 years.

I chose to assume what they said was true. I quit my job. I didn’t want to fall over dead at my desk.

I saw a powerful film interview with Upton Sinclair that had a huge impact on my life. He concluded that, based on his wife’s death (which followed years of pain and agony), one important thing one could do with his life was to reduce suffering.

I resolved to live my life as fully as I could. I had belonged to RESULTS, a grassroots advocacy organization mobilizing political support and effective investments to end poverty, for a little over ten years then. I had learned that 40,000 of our brothers and sisters under five on the planet were dying every day from diseases that were mostly preventable and treatable. I decided to do all that I could, under RESULTS’ tutelage, to bring that number down.

I found out that simple things – from oral rehydration salts and vitamin A capsules costing mere pennies, to measles vaccination, to inexpensive antibiotics for pneumonia – could together reduce that 40,000 number by a large percentage. What was missing was the funding and the political will to make sure those things got to the countries and kids who needed them most. It blew my mind.

That’s when I became an advocate.

Through RESULTS, I learned to use my voice to change the world. I joined with hundreds of other volunteer advocates – in the media, in our communities, and in the halls of Congress – to call for a change.

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Tackling Cavities in India’s Slums with Xylitol Gum

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A boy in Bangalore, India, trying out Sweet Bites gum. Spencer Penn

During Morgan Snyder’s year of volunteering at an education charity in Bangalore, she noticed that many of the children complained of toothaches. Teachers told her that kids were missing sessions because of dental health problems, and that many did not brush more than once a day, and poorly at that. Her well-educated local friends didn’t like going to the dentist, and she observed that a culture of regular dental check ups did not exist in India.

After returning to the University of Pennsylvania for her sophomore year, she talked about what she had seen with friends. One, Josh Tycko, proposed that they tackle the problem and vie for the $1 million Hult Prize for student social entrepreneurs, which Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has called the “Nobel Prize for students.” This year’s prize focused on improving life for people living in slums.

Spencer Penn, an avid gum chewer in the tight-knit group of five, suggested using chewing gum as a way to address the dental health problem in India’s slums. But not any chewing gum – the gum that the group has produced, called Sweet Bites, is sweetened with 100 percent xylitol, a naturally occurring sweetener that is believed to prevent tooth decay. Xylitol-sweetened gum is common in Finland, where its efficacy was documented in the 1970s. Some gum companies in the United States that sell sugarless gum use xylitol, though most use it in combination with sorbitol or aspartame, which lack xylitol’s dental benefits. “Xylitol has been used by the Finns since the 70s,” says Thoba Grenville-Grey, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in May and has been helping to implement programs on the ground. “They give this to kids at the school.”

Sweet Bites gum. Goodwin Design Group

The group hopes that they can make chewing xylitol gum a common practice among India’s schoolchildren and other slum residents. The packaging is designed to look Western for extra appeal, and they have taken heed of Professor Ezekiel Emanuel‘s advice: “When it comes to health care, free is not cheap enough.”

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Step One to Fighting Ebola? Start with Corruption

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The story of the current Ebola pandemic appears still in its opening chapter. Will the virus be contained, or will it spread its horror across Africa and beyond? The question is being raised around many family tables, including ours, particularly as my wife and I and our three small children, New Yorkers, live in Rwanda where I work in public health and she operates a job training program and a gourmet restaurant. There is a bit of fear in the air here as everywhere, but it is tempered by what we know about Africa.

Since March, more than 4,000 people, including over a hundred medical workers, have died of the Ebola virus in Western Africa. Why have the health systems in these countries, after billions of dollars in international aid, lost control of this modern plague? For starters, most African nations scarcely have anything we would call a health system, despite aid programs and waves of dedicated medical and development volunteers. As fast as we can pour resources in, the thousand cuts of corruption and poor business practices let it leak out. Like Ebola itself, corruption is a hemorrhaging disease. When aid programs fail because of corruption, further aid programs are discouraged. Ultimately, little health clinics with empty shelves, peeling paint and no staff are left to rot under the jungle trees.

A mother speaks about her baby's immunizations and weight with a nurse at the Gataraga health center in Musanze, Rwanda. Gadi Habumugisha

I have seen those pathetic health facilities, but in Rwanda I’ve seen them cleaned up, restocked with the best medicines, nurses and doctors, and now prepared for what may come this way from West Africa. What has been done in Rwanda, however, is not possible in countries rife with corruption. Here in Rwanda, no one has ever put a hand out to me for a bribe – not once in the near decade I’ve lived here. That lack of hemorrhaging is what will enable us to stop Ebola here. Ebola is a marker for corruption on high, just as entrenched poverty is a marker for corruption on high. In the great influenza plague of 1918, when twenty million people died worldwide, the great difference between a country that suffered greatly, like India, and a country that suffered little at all, like Denmark, was the strength of the middle class. The strength of the middle class is most commonly a function of public and private health, and clean, just governance.

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Why We Stayed

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“I stayed because I didn’t think anyone would believe a terminally ill person could abuse,” a woman wrote to me. “Although he was losing weight he was still strong. He could overpower me and throw things. But he needed me.”

A woman we’ll call “Sharon” chose to stay in a violent marriage. Sharon’s husband dutifully supported their family prior to being diagnosed with cancer. Since then, her husband had become physically and verbally abusive. Fiscal reasons did not keep her in a violent marriage; she resolutely believed that she owed end of life care to the man who had supported her.

Sharon’s story is just one of dozens of emails I’ve received since starting the Twitter hashtag #WhyIStayed. When a domestic violence situation happens in the news, too often the first public response is, “Why did she stay?” as opposed to, “Why was this crime committed against her?” The responsibility for the violence doesn’t lie with the victim, it lies with the offender. Every person has the right to exist without violence.

Beverly Gooden, creator of the #WhyIStayed hashtag. Beverly Gooden

I started the #WhyIStayed hashtag because of my dismay while reading tweets in my Twitter feed – by people I knew, including friends – that blamed Janay Rice for having stayed with Ray Rice. So I decided to share my reason for staying. “I stayed because my pastor told me that God hates divorce. It didn’t cross my mind that God might hate abuse, too. #WhyIStayed.” I tweeted. “He said he would change. He promised it was the last time. I believed him. He lied. #WhyIStayed.” And then I returned to my work. An hour later, when I checked Twitter again, use of the hashtag had exploded, and it kicked off a conversation that has given other survivors the chance to tell their stories. As they continue to share their stories in the digital space, I’d like to share some lessons I’ve learned over the past month.

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