In the 19th century, slavery was the central moral challenge facing the world; in the 20th century, it was totalitarianism; in this century, it is the oppression of women and girls, said New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof and former Times' writer Sheryl WuDunn '81 to a packed Statler Auditorium April 29.

Kristof and WuDunn, who were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, spoke as part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the President's Council of Cornell Women (of which WuDunn is a founding member). They made an impassioned plea to stop the abuses that arise from gender inequity in the developing world, such as sex-trafficking, maternal mortality, mutilation and malnourishment.

They make similar cases in their new book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide."

In some African nations, the mortality rate for girls between ages 1 and 5 is 50 percent higher than for boys, WuDunn said, because parents feed the boys first when food is scarce. She showed a photograph of an emaciated girl at a feeding center whose skin clung tightly to her protruding ribs and shoulder blades. "The most remarkable thing," WuDunn said, "is that her brothers are a normal weight."

Kristof showed a photograph of a 13-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and forced to work in a brothel. When she refused to cooperate, the brothel owner gouged out her right eye.

He also described interviewing two girls, ages 14 and 15, who were locked in a Cambodian brothel, and the guilt that shrouded him when he left.

"I walked out of there knowing I had a great front-page story, but those two girls would stay there and die of AIDS," he said.

Kristof called The New York Times' lawyer to ask if the newspaper had a policy on purchasing human beings. "It turns out they didn't!" he said, so he returned to the brothel and bought the two girls' freedom for $350.

"The most striking thing about it was that I got receipts. When you can get a receipt for buying a human being, that truly is a disgrace of this century," he lamented.

The differences between modern and traditional slavery are the numbers of slaves and their commercial value, Kristof explained. Ten times as many people are trafficked across international borders today than during the peak of the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century.

One thing that protected slaves in past centuries was their high price, Kristof said, which was around $40,000 for a healthy male. Girls in Southeast Asia today are bought and sold for about $100, which makes them much more expendable.

"That's why brothel owners will gouge out their eyes or kill them," he said.

Kristof and WuDunn advocate microfinance and education as paths out of the vicious cycle of oppression. "Giving women the opportunity to generate an income can be truly transformative," Kristof said.

He expounded on low-cost, effective means of keeping girls enrolled in school, such as giving out pads to manage menstruation, which an Oxford University study showed could cut absenteeism by half.

During the question session, an audience member asked how Americans can help fight the worldwide oppression of women, given that many people are "hesitant to send money to an organization when they're not sure where it's going to go."

Kristof replied that he and WuDunn want their recently released book, "Half the Sky," to be a "do-it-yourself handbook" with a list of vetted organizations.

"And we want people to do more than just write checks -- we want you get involved with organizations," he said. "We certainly want to recruit you!"

Graduate student Melissa Rice is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.