Champion of Choice
The Life and Legacy of Women's Advocate Nafis Sadik
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- 199,00 kr
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- 199,00 kr
Publisher Description
Not many women can claim to have changed history, but Nafis Sadik set that goal in her youth, and change the world she did. Champion of Choice tells the remarkable story of how Sadik, born into a prominent Indian family in 1929, came to be the world’s foremost advocate for women’s health and reproductive rights, the first female director of a United Nations agency, and “one of the most powerful women in the world” (London Times).
An obstetrician, wife, mother, and devout Muslim, Sadik has been a courageous and tireless advocate for women, insisting on discussing the difficult issues that impact their lives: education, contraception, abortion, as well as rape and other forms of violence. After Sadik joined the fledgling UN Population Fund in 1971, her groundbreaking strategy for providing females with education and the tools to control their own fertility has dramatically influenced the global birthrate. This book is the first to examine Sadik’s contribution to history and the unconventional methods she has employed to go head-to-head with world leaders to improve millions of women’s lives.
Interspersed between the chapters recounting Sadik’s life are vignettes of females around the globe who represent her campaign against domestic abuse, child marriage, genital mutilation, and other human rights violations. With its insights into the political, religious, and domestic battles that have dominated women’s destinies, Sadik’s life story is as inspirational as it is dramatic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Essayist and creative writing teacher Miller (Desert Flower) offers an intimate, exhaustive biography of Nafis Sadik, a woman from an upper-class Indian family who became a physician and would eventually pioneer women s health and welfare rights around the world. By the time of her retirement, at age 70, as head of the UNFPA, Sadik was the top ranking woman in the United Nations. While lauded as efficient and unendingly energetic, Miller also reveals Sadik s warts, including difficulties in adjusting to the U.S. and an estrangement from one of her daughters. Sadik was an enigma, a female physician who had to navigate the male-dominated ways and means of medicine. Yet just when her reluctant admirers would consider her "one of the boys she would sneak out to go shopping." Interspersed with Sadik s biographical information are brief but powerful sketches about individual women s struggles to avoid traditional circumcision practices, obtain sex education about HIV/AIDS, or avoid sexual exploitation. The vignettes are interesting but they rarely have a direct tie back to Sadik, weakening what is already an information-laden book.