Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is a landmark transmedia project featuring a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event, a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two websites, educational videos, a social media campaign supporting over 30 partner NGOs, and an impact assessment plan all inspired by Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The Half the Sky Movement

The central moral challenge of our time has reached a tipping point. Just as slavery was the defining struggle of the nineteenth century and totalitarianism that of the twentieth, the fight to end the oppression of women and girls worldwide defines our current one. 

Gabrielle Union listens to a boy reading during Room to Read's 10 millionth book ceremony in Vietnam

Photo by Peter Stuckings

Embedded in the linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality (which still needlessly claims one woman every ninety seconds) is the single most vital opportunity of our time — and all over the world, women are seizing it. From Somaliland to Cambodia to Afghanistan, oppression is being confronted and real, meaningful solutions are being fashioned — through health care, education and economic empowerment for women and girls. Change is happening, and it’s happening now.

In 2009, with the acclaimed bestselling book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (already in its 25th printing in hardback alone), journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn took on this urgent moral challenge and encouraged readers all over the world to join the burgeoning movement for change. Ignited by a high-profile national television event, the Half the Sky Movement is fueled by a host of significant multi-platform initiatives. Now, a landmark transmedia project—inspired by Kristof and WuDunn’s work—promises to amplify the book’s impact. 

Learn more about the project and the movement at halftheskymovement.org.

Half the Sky Movement: The Game

A compelling adventure game on Facebook takes you on a journey through five countries and brings awareness to the work of seven nonprofits providing opportunities to women and girls. Create opportunities for women and girls around education, health, entrepreneurship, and much more through completing quests in the game. 

Play the game

Community Cinema

Community Cinema is a groundbreaking public education and civic engagement initiative featuring free monthly screenings of films from the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens. Community Cinema is on location in more than 95 cities nationally, bringing together leading organizations, community members, and public television stations to learn, discuss, and get involved in key social issues of our time.