The Unfinished Revolution

Starred review from March 5, 2012
This compilation of commissioned essays, anecdotes, and photos presents a powerful overview of contemporary women's issuesâfrom the unsettlingly enormous backlogs of untested rape kits in Los Angeles, to genital mutilation and child marriage in Kurdistan and Afghanistanâand the ongoing fight for women's rights around the world. Encompassing the voices of Nobel laureates (e.g., Tawakkyl Karmen and Jody Williams), a Somali gynecologist, domestic workers, an Egyptian social media activist, and many more, this invaluable tome provides an introduction to women's rights as human rights, tracks some of the movement's successes, reveals many lingering problems, explores "The Next Frontier," and offers suggestions for further reading. While women have come a long way in the past centuryâespecially in the U.S.âWorden (Media Director of Human Rights Watch) and myriad contributors (men among them) show that women must unite as a whole in order to effectuate lasting, global change. Gara LaMarcheâformer vice president of the Open Society Foundationsâmaintains that "there can be no social or economic justice, or human rights progress around the world, that does not have women and girls at the core." While sociologically and academically relevant, this is a cohesive and eminently readable document that is simultaneously an inspiration and a call-to-action. Photos.

April 1, 2012
Inspired by the awarding of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize to three women for their nonviolent battles for the safety of women and human rights, Tawakkul Karman, of Yemen; Liberia's Leymah Gbowee; and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, Worden, of Human Rights Watch, gathered together essays assessing the progress of worldwide rights for women and girls since the UN's human rights conferences in the 1990s. The ongoing global struggle consists of three distinct spheres: economic issues (human trafficking, property rights); violence against women and their health rights (including genital mutilation); and harmful traditions (religious clothing restraints, so-called honor crimes). Contributors begin with Eleanor Roosevelt's 1958 warning that Cold War politics threatened a doctrine of universal human rights transcending national sovereignty and move forward to today's unequal property rights for African women and violence against immigrant women in America. Diverse voices of hopeless, hopeful, and boldly determined women from around the world constitute a compelling, multicultural resource supplemented by copious endnotes, a reading list, and an index.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)