United Nations – Renaissance Guy

Bretton Woods

So I realized earlier this week, while staring at the return address stamped on the sign outside the small post office on the lower level of the resort my grandfather selected for us on our family trip, that we were in fact staying in the same hotel which hosted the famous Bretton Woods Conference, that resulted in the Bretton Woods System that governed post-WWII economic rebuilding around the world, and laid the groundwork for our modern economic system, helping to cement the idea of currency as we consider it today.

Needless to say, I find this intensely fascinating; both the conference itself as a gathering of some of the most powerful people at one of the major turning points in history, and the system that resulted from it. Since I can’t recall having spent any time on this subject in my high school economics course, I thought I would go over some of the highlights, along with pictures of the resort that I was able to snap.

First, some background on the conference. The Bretton Woods conference took place in July of 1944, while the Second World War was still in full swing. The allied landings in Normandy, less than a month earlier, had been successful in establishing isolated beachheads, but Operation Overlord as a whole could still fail if British, Canadian, American, and Free French forces were prevented from linking up and liberating Paris.

On the Eastern European front, the Red Army had just begun Operation Bagration, the long planned grand offensive to push Nazi forces out of the Soviet Union entirely, and begin pushing offensively through occupied Eastern Europe and into Germany. Soviet victories would continue to rack up as the conference went on, as the Red Army executed the largest and most successful offensive in its history, escalating political concerns among the western allies about the role the Soviet Union and its newly “liberated” territory could play in a postwar world.

In the pacific, the Battle of Saipan was winding down towards an American victory, radically changing the strategic situation by putting the Japanese homeland in range of American strategic bombing. Even as the battles rage on, more and more leaders on both sides look increasingly to the possibility of an imminent allied victory.

As the specter of rebuilding a world ravaged by the most expensive and most devastating conflict in human history (and hopefully ever) began to seem closer, representatives of all nations in the allied powers met in a resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at the foot of Mount Washington, to discuss the economic future of a postwar world in the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, more commonly referred to as the Bretton Woods Conference. The site was chosen because, in addition to being vacant (since the war had effectively killed tourism), the isolation of the surrounding mountains made the site suitably defensible against any sort of attack. It was hoped that this show of hospitality and safety would assuage delegates coming from war torn and occupied parts of the world.

After being told that the hotel had only 200-odd rooms for a conference of 700-odd delegates, most delegates, naturally, decided to bring their families, an many cases bringing as many extended relatives as could be admitted on diplomatic credentials. Of course, this was probably as much about escaping the ongoing horrors in Europe and Asia as it was getting a free resort vacation.

These were just the delegates. Now imagine adding families, attachés, and technical staff.

As such, every bed within a 22 mile radius was occupied. Staff were forced out of their quarters and relocated to the stable barns to make room for delegates. Even then, guests were sleeping in chairs, bathtubs, even on the floors of the conference rooms themselves.

The conference was attended by such illustrious figures as John Maynard Keynes (yes, that Keynes) and Harry Dexter White (who, in addition to being the lead American delegate, was also almost certainly a spy for the Soviet NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB), who clashed on what, fundamentally, should be the aim of the allies to establish in a postwar economic order.

Spoiler: That guy on the right is going to keep coming up.

Everyone agreed that protectionist, mercantilist, and “economic nationalist” policies of the interwar period had contributed both to the utter collapse of the Great Depression, and the collapse of European markets, which created the socioeconomic conditions for the rise of fascism. Everyone agreed that punitive reparations placed on Germany after WWI had set up European governments for a cascade of defaults and collapses when Germany inevitably failed to pay up, and turned to playing fast and loose with its currency and trade policies to adhere to the letter of the Treaty of Versailles.

It was also agreed that even if reparations were entirely done away with, which would leave allied nations such as France, and the British commonwealth bankrupt for their noble efforts, that the sheer upfront cost of rebuilding would be nigh impossible by normal economic means, and that leaving the task of rebuilding entire continents would inevitably lead to the same kind of zero-sum competition and unsound monetary policy that had led to the prewar economic collapse in the first place. It was decided, then, that the only way to ensure economic stability through the period of rebuilding was to enforce universal trade policies, and to institute a number of centralized financial organizations under the purview of the United Nations, to oversee postwar rebuilding and monetary policy.

It was also, evidently, the beginning of the age of minituraized flags.

The devil was in the details, however. The United States, having spent the war safe from serious economic infrastructure damage, serving as the “arsenal of democracy”, and generally being the only country that had reserves of capital, wanted to use its position of relative economic supremacy to gain permanent leverage. As the host of the conference and the de-facto lead for the western allies, the US held a great deal of negotiating power, and the US delegates fully intended to use it to see that the new world order would be one friendly to American interests.

Moreover, the US, and to a lesser degree, the United Kingdom, wanted to do as much as possible to prevent the Soviet Union from coming to dominate the world after it rebuilt itself. As World War II was beginning to wind down, the Cold War was beginning to wind up. To this end, the news of daily Soviet advances, first pushing the Nazis out of its borders, and then steamrolling into Poland, Finland, and the Baltics was troubling. Even more troubling were the rumors of the ruthless NKVD suppression of non-communist partisan groups that had resisted Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe, indicating that the Soviets might be looking to establish their own postwar hegemony.

Although something tells me this friendship isn't going to last — Pictured: The beginning of a remarkable friendship between US and USSR delegates

The first major set piece of the conference agreement was relatively uncontroversial: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, drafted by Keynes and his committee, was established to offer grants and loans to countries recovering from the war. As an independent institution, it was hoped that the IBRD would offer flexibility to rebuilding nations that loans from other governments with their own financial and political obligations and interests could not. This was also a precursor to, and later backbone of, the Marshal Plan, in which the US would spend exorbitant amounts on foreign aid to rebuild capitalism in Europe and Asia in order to prevent the rise of communist movements fueled by lack of opportunity.

The second major set piece is where things get really complicated. I’m massively oversimplifying here, but global macroeconomic policy is inevitably complicated in places. The second major set-piece, a proposed “International Clearing Union” devised by Keynes back in 1941, was far more controversial.

The plan, as best I am able to understand it, called for all international trade to be handled through a single centralized institution, which would measure the value of all other goods and currencies relative to a standard unit, tentatively called a “bancor”. The ICU would then offer incentives to maintain trade balances relative to the size of a nation’s economy, by charging interest off of countries with a major trade surplus, and using the excess to devalue the exchange rates of countries with trade deficits, making imports more expensive and products more desirable to overseas consumers.

The Grand Ballroom was thrown into fierce debate, and the local Boy Scouts that had been conscripted to run microphones between delegates (most of the normal staff either having been drafted, or completely overloaded) struggled to keep up with these giants of economics and diplomacy.

Photo of the Grand Ballroom, slightly digitally adjusted to compensate for bad lighting during our tour

Unsurprisingly, the US delegate, White, was absolutely against Keynes’s hair brained scheme. Instead, he proposed a far less ambitious “International Monetary Fund”, which would judge trade balances, and prescribe limits for nations seeking aid from the IMF or IBRD, but otherwise would generally avoid intervening. The IMF did keep Keynes’s idea of judging trade based on a pre-set exchange rate (also obligatory for members), but avoided handing over the power to unilaterally affect the value of individual currencies to the IMF, instead leaving it in the hands of national governments, and merely insisting on certain requirements for aid and membership. It also did away with notions of an ultranational currency.

Of course, this raised the question of how to judge currency values other than against each other alone (which was still seen as a bridge too far in the eyes of many). The solution, proposed by White, was simple: judge other currencies against the US dollar. After all, the United States was already the largest and most developed economy. And since other countries had spent the duration of the war buying materiel from the US, it also held the world’s largest reserves of almost every currency, including gold and silver, and sovereign debt. The US was the only country to come out of WWII with enough gold in reserve to stay on the gold standard and also finance postwar rebuilding, which made it a perfect candidate as a default currency.

US, Canadian, and Soviet delegates discuss the merits of Free Trade

Now, you can see this move either as a sensible compromise for a world of countries that couldn’t have gone back to their old ways if they tried, or as a master stroke attempt by the US government to cement its supremacy at the beginning of the Cold War. Either way, it worked as a solution, both in the short term, and in the long term, creating a perfect balance of stability and flexibility in monetary policy for a postwar economic boom, not just in the US, but throughout the capitalist world.

The third set piece was a proposed “International Trade Organization”, which was to oversee implementation and enforcement of the sort of universal free trade policies that almost everyone agreed would be most conducive not only to prosperity, but to peace as a whole. Perhaps surprisingly, this wasn’t terribly divisive at the conference.

The final agreement for the ITO, however, was eventually shot down when the US Senate refused to ratify its charter, partly because the final conference had been administered in Havana under Keynes, who used the opportunity to incorporate many of his earlier ideas on an International Clearing Union. Much of the basic policies of the ITO, however, influenced the successful General Agreements on Tarriffs and Trade, which would later be replaced by the World Trade Organization.

Pictured: The main hallway as seen from the Grand Ballroom. Notice the moose on the right, above the fireplace.

The Bretton Woods agreement was signed by the allied delegates in the resort’s Gold Room. Not all countries that signed immediately ratified. The Soviet Union, perhaps unsurprisingly, reversed its position on the agreement, calling the new international organizations “a branch of Wall Street”, going on to found the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, a forerunner to the Warsaw Pact, within five years. The British Empire, particularly its overseas possessions, also took time in ratifying, owing to the longstanding colonial trade policies that had to be dismantled in order for free trade requirements to be met.

The consensus of most economists is that Bretton Woods was a success. The system more or less ceased to exist when Nixon, prompted by Cold War drains on US resources, and French schemes to exchange all of its reserve US dollars for gold, suspended the Gold Standard for the US dollar, effectively ushering in the age of free-floating fiat currencies; that is, money that has value because we all collectively accept that it does; an assumption that underlies most of our modern economic thinking.

There’s a plaque on the door to the room in which the agreement was signed. I’m sure there’s something metaphorical in there.

While it certainly didn’t last forever, the Bretton Woods system did accomplish its primary goal of setting the groundwork for a stable world economy, capable of rebuilding and maintaining the peace. This is a pretty lofty achievement when one considers the background against which the conference took place, the vast differences between the players, and the general uncertainty about the future.

The vision set forth in the Bretton Woods Conference was an incredibly optimistic, even idealistic, one. It’s easy to scoff at the idea of hammering out an entire global economic system, in less than a month, at a backwoods hotel in the White Mountains, but I think it speaks to the intense optimism and hope for the future that is often left out of the narrative of those dark moments. The belief that we can, out of chaos and despair, forge a brighter future not just for ourselves, but for all, is not in itself crazy, and the relative success of the Bretton Woods System, flawed though it certainly was, speaks to that.

A beautiful picture of Mt. Washington at sunset from the hotel’s lounge

Works Consulted

IMF. “60th Anniversary of Bretton Woods.” 60th Anniversary – Background Information, what is the Bretton Woods Conference. International Monetary Fund, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2017. <http://external.worldbankimflib.org/Bwf/whatisbw.htm>.

“Cooperation and Reconstruction (1944-71).” About the IMF: History. International Monetary Fund, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2017. <http://www.imf.org/external/about/histcoop.htm>

YouTube. Extra Credits, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2017. <http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CL-krstYn532QY1Ayo27s1>.

Burant, Stephen R. East Germany, a country study. Washington, D.C.: The Division, 1988. Library of Congress. Web. 10 Aug. 2017. <https://archive.org/details/eastgermanycount00bura_0>.

US Department of State. “Proceedings and Documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1-22, 1944.” Proceedings and Documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1-22, 1944 – FRASER – St. Louis Fed. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2017. <https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/430>.

Additional information provided by resort staff and exhibitions visitited in person.

Facing Failure

I am in a particularly gloomy, dare I say, depressed, mood upon the eve of my writing this. Owing to the impending blizzard, United Nations Headquarters has been closed, and subsequently the events which I was to attend for the Women’s Empowerment Principles have been “postponed indefinitely”. The news reached me only minutes before I was to board the train which would have taken me into the city, where I had arranged for a hotel room overnight so as to avoid to having to travel during a blizzard.

This left me with an urgent choice: I could board the train, and spend a day trapped in a frozen city that was actively trying to dissuade people from traveling, or I could cut my losses, eat the cost of the hotel room, and return home to ride out the storm there. It probably surprises few that I chose the latter option; the option touted as the more sensible, strategically conservative, objectively correct option. Still, making this choice left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. It leaves me feeling as though I have failed.

I do not like failure.

Actually, that statement is inaccurate, or at least, misleading. I don’t merely dislike failure, in the same way that I dislike, say, sunscreen. No, I hate failure, in every sense of the word. I loathe it, detest it, and yes, I fear it.

This is not to say that I have such strong feelings toward losses. I feel this is an important distinction. Though I do have an adversity to unnecessary losses, sometimes, such sacrifices are necessary. What I hate is trying, making sacrifices, and then failing despite, or even worse, because of those efforts. The important distinction, at least in my mind, is that losses are a strategic principle, and a passing phenomenon, while failure is a state of being, whether for a few moments surrounding a particular exercise, or for a lifetime.

As one might expect, this makes me, in general, rather risk averse. Of course, this itself presents a paradox. Not taking a given risk also entails the inverse risk contained in the opportunity cost. That is to say, by not taking a given bet, you are effectively betting against it. This means that refusing to accept risks is always inherently itself a risk. So, for example, one cannot accept a zero percent chance of food poisoning without not eating altogether; and if one were to attempt to do so, they would quickly find themselves confronted by the more urgent problem of starvation.

The blizzard that closed the UN put me in a no-win situation. As a rational person, I can accept this, and act to cut my losses. Either I canceled my trip, resigned myself to staying at home, and ate the cost of my hotel reservations, or I purchased my train ticket, defied government instructions to stay home and avoid travel, put myself in danger, and spent the day trapped in a hotel room. I understand rationally why I chose as I did, and rationally, maintain that I made the correct decision. Yet I cannot escape the feeling that in choosing to abort my plans, I have failed my objective. Even if there was nothing to gain by getting on the train, I cannot suppress the feeling that my conscious choice invited some moral failing.

Some cursory research suggests that this particular feeling is not unique to myself, nor is it a new field of philosophical musings. Humans feel more emotional and moral responsibility for acts which are consciously undertaken than for merely following existing plans. This feeling is so prevalent it carries legal weight; binding contracts cannot be made by failing to decline an agreement; they require active assent. This might explain why I feel particularly upset with myself; If I had made no choice, then any perceived failure could only be an act of God, and out of my control. By making a conscious decision to cut my losses, I made that result a personal consequence, at least to my subconscious mind.

This leaves me at something of an impasse. I know why I am upset, yet can do little to console myself except to distract and reassure the nagging elements of my unconscious mind that I made the correct decision. I am left in conflict with myself, and left acutely aware of the fickleness of my own mind. While I suppose that this state of affairs is strictly preferable to feeling upset and not understanding why at all, I still cannot bring myself to feel in any meaningful way confident about myself in the present tense, particularly as these most recent reactions would seem to indicate that I might not be the single-mindedly rational being that I like to pretend that I am.

As I have indicated previously, I have very little intrinsic self confidence, at least in the manner which most people seem to expect that I ought. For whatever reason, I cannot seem to raise such self-evident feelings of self worth, and therefore, when I project such feelings, it is borne not of some internal passion, but extrinsic, statistical calculation. I base my self-assessment not on my own feelings, nor on others’ opinions, but on data and milestones. And though I feel that this generally gives me a better handle on the limits of my abilities, it also means that when I put my mind to a particular objective, and yet still fail for whatever reason, it becomes not only a momentary setback, but a point of evidence against my worth as a human being.

This can, and historically has, resulted in a mental loop whereby a temporary failure, such as a meeting which I had my aspirations set upon being cancelled by a snowstorm, leads to a general hardening of outlook, which in turn causes me to shift to the back foot, acting more conservatively, and taking fewer risky opportunities. Consequently, I wind up having fewer major victories to celebrate and reassure myself, and am instead left to reflect upon all of the opportunities which I missed. Because I was led to skip these choices by seemingly rational means, I cannot regret individual choices, but rather categorize them as mere symptoms of a general moral failing. These reflections promote further self-doubt, further strategic conservatism, and so on.

So, what can I do about it?

With the help of family and friends, I have come to realize that this is a viscous cycle that represents many of the worst and most self-destructive aspects of my personality and manner of thought. Of course, recognizing this fact consciously is the easy part. Hindsight is perfect, after all. The hard part is determining how to counter this cycle.

Historically my solution to such problems has been to throw myself into work, especially school work. This serves a dual purpose. First, if I am working hard enough, I do not have the time nor the energy to stew over my situation in more general terms. Second, it gives me a sense that I am accomplishing something. From primary through early high school, this approach has generally worked.

However, more recently, as the school has continued to demonstrate its gross incompetence in accommodating my physical disabilities, and as they have become increasingly distraught over the fact that my disability has not healed itself by magic, it has apparently occurred to the school administration that the correct way to inspire me to overcome medical impossibilities is to continually evoke shame each time my medical issues cause me to miss a deadline. Exactly what they aim to accomplish through this pestering continues to elude me. But in any case, this state of affairs means that greater effort on my part is more often scolded than rewarded. For, it seems, every time I attempt to reach out for clarification and assistance, I am subjected to a lecture on “personal responsibility”.

Because the school administration is apparently so “forward thinking”, and therefore does not believe in disability whatsoever, I am told that the fault for my failures is not, cannot, lie in my disability, but only in my personal moral failings. I am told by special education professionals that if I were truly dedicated to my academic performance, that my chronic diseases ought not have any impact on my life whatsoever. My promises that I will do my utmost given what I have to work with fall on deaf ears, because, allegedly, if I were to truly do my utmost, I would already be done on my own.

Needless to say, this experience is extremely stressful, and only deepens my sense of failure, self-hatred and anxiety. It should surprise no one that I am not terribly productive under such conditions, which only exacerbates the problem. Thus it comes to pass that throwing myself into schoolwork and attempting to prove myself wrong; to prove that I can indeed overcome opposition and be successful, only leads to more evidence that I am a failure.

I have looked, and am still looking, into various strategies to deal with this cycle moving forward. One strategy has been to write, and to post here. Another has been to give myself permission to engage in short “micro-vacations” as I call them, or “sanity-breaks” as my doctors refer to them. These short periods can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the severity of my initial state, particularly as they tend to coincide with when I am most physically fatigued*, but the important part is that they remain constrained to a specific time instead of drawing out into a general malaise. During this time, I temporarily do away with all pretense of productivity, and allow myself to engage in whatever petty amusement strikes my fancy.

*Sidenote: the overlap between physiological issues and mental symptoms is a recurring theme, making meaningful treatment for both all the more challenging. After all, is it really paranoia if your statistical chances of dying are vastly increased? The consensus thus far is that it isn’t. This is the reason why, despite having all of the symptoms, I do not technically qualify for any mental health diagnosis; because in my case, the source is obvious and completely justified.

In this respect, the fact that the same blizzard which set me on this spiral also shut down most everything in the vicinity comprises a silver lining of sorts. Obviously, there is no magic bullet for irrational feelings of failure. But perhaps that is beside the point. Perhaps the point of overcoming this feeling is not to wind up standing triumphantly atop the pile of slain emotions, but to reach a peaceful stalemate. I do not necessarily need to feel good about the fact that I could not accomplish my goals; merely be able to accept it without it destroying myself. Perhaps it might be enough to be able to calmly analyze and discuss my thoughts in writing, without necessarily having to reach a decisive conclusion.

Reflections on International Women’s Day

I stated previously that I intended to bring this blog offline once again in solidarity with the Day Without Women Strike for International Women’s Day on March 8th. Two things have convinced me to alter my plans slightly. First, the strike organizers seem to be calling for only women to actually strike today, and are encouraging men to participate in other ways. This is fair enough. After all, it’s not my voice being put down, and I would have a hard time coming up with a tangible example of a time that gender discrimination has impacted me directly (It impacts me indirectly all the time, by holding back scientific progress by the selective suppression of certain groups’ advancement, but I digress).

Second, and arguably more important, is the point that, while striking and industrial action may be effective means of grabbing headlines, the point of these exercises is not to elicit silence, but conversation. Given that people seem to have this notion that I am a moderately talented communicator, and have chosen to listen to me, it stands to reason that a more appropriate response might be to attempt to add to the conversation myself.

It’s easy not to notice something that doesn’t affect oneself directly. Humans, it seems, possess an extraordinary talent for ignoring things that they feel do not concern them, particularly where knowledge of those things would make their lives and understanding of how the world works more complicated. This is probably a good thing on the whole, as it allows us to get through the day without having an existential crisis over the impending heat death of the universe, and feeling continually depressed about the state of affairs for our fellow humans in the developing world. On the other hand, it also makes it distressingly easy for us to overlook challenges to others when they do not have a direct impact on us.

Recently, I was invited to attend an event regarding the ongoing development and implementation of the Women’s Empowerment Principles at the United Nations. Now, as much as I like to believe that I am a progressive person capable of and inclined to provide and advocate for equal opportunity, it is impossible to deny the simple fact that I am male. And while I can name all kinds of discrimination that I have myself encountered, none of them relate to my sexual and gender identity. And so when it comes to suggesting ways to remedy present injustices, I do not really have a solid background to draw from.

I probably could have gotten away with what I already know. After all, with my limited experience in educating others on specific issues, and with my commitment to the principles of equality in general, surely I have enough context to be able to, if not contribute on my own, then at least, to pay homage to the general notion of women’s struggles?

Perhaps. But, I know enough people whom I respect, for whom this is a serious issue worthy of dedicating entire careers to. Additionally, I like to make a point to be an informed interlocutor. It is my firm position that all opinions worthy of serious discussion ought to have a firm factual and logical backing. And given that, in this case unlike most others, I do not have a personal background experience to draw upon, it seems only correct that I do my due diligence research so that I may make responsible and informed conclusions.

Thus, it transpired that I set myself the goal of becoming, if not an expert, then at least competent, in the field of gender relations and sexual inequality around the world in the space of just over two weeks. A lofty goal, to be sure, but a worthy one. My reading list included an assortment of United Nations, governmental and NGO reports, various statistical analyses, news stories, and a few proper books. Actually, calling it a reading list is a tad misleading, as, in order to cram as much information into as short a time as possible, most of the material in question was consumed in audio format, played at double or triple speed. This is a very effective way of gleaning the key facts without having to waste time on wasteful frivolities like enjoying the plot.

Most of my initial digging started in various UN organizations, chiefly the media center of the World Health Organization. While not always as in depth as respective national organizations, the WHO is useful inasmuch as it provides decent cursory summaries for the global perspective. What was most fascinating to me was that there were surprisingly few hard statistics. The biggest problem listed, particularly in the developing world, was not that women received a necessarily lower quality of healthcare, but that most did not receive health care at all, and therefore properly compiled statistics on gender discrepancies in health were notoriously hard to come by. Rather than telling a story, the data simply does not exist.

In a bitter irony, the more likely data was to exist for a specific region, the less likely significant gender discrepancies were to be shown to exist, at least in healthcare. That is to say that by the time that rigorous evidence could be compiled, the worst elements of inequality had been subdued. This makes a kind of sense. After all, if the problem is that women aren’t being allowed to participate in public, how exactly are you going to survey them? This also hinted at a theme that would continue to crop up: different regions and cultures are starting at tackling gender inequality from radically different starting points, and face accordingly different challenges.

My second major revelation came while listening to I Am Malala. For those who may have been living under a rock during that timeframe, here is the background: In 2012, Malala Yousefzai, a human rights and women’s education activist in rural Pakistan was shot by the taliban, sparking international outrage and renewed interest in the plight of women in the Middle East. Malala survived after being airlifted to the United Kingdom, and has since garnered celebrity status, becoming a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ women’s empowerment initiatives.

I have still not yet made up my mind on whether I will go so far as to say that I liked the book. I do not know that is the sort of book that is meant to be liked. I did, however, find it quite enlightening. The book is a first person biography; a kind of story that I have never been quite as interested in as the classic anecdote. If I am completely honest, I found most of the beginning rather dry. The story felt to me as though it had grown rather repetitive: Malala would have some dream or ambition that would seem fairly modest to those of us living in the developed world, which would naturally be made extremely contentious and difficult because she was a girl living in her particular culture.

It got a the point where I could practically narrate alongside the audiobook. And then, halfway through the twelfth or so incident where Malala came up short owing to her gender and her culture, it hit me: that’s the whole point. Yes, it is tedious, to the point of being frustrating to the narrative. That’s the point here. No part of this book would have happened, if not for the constant, grating frustration of sexist attitudes and policies. The story couldn’t progress because of those obstacles, and every time it seemed like one hurdle had been surmounted, another one cropped up. Because that’s what it’s like. And if I, the reader, was frustrated trying to hear the story, just imagine what it would be like to deal with the real deal.

A second revelation also occurred to me. In trying to tell of my tribulations in living with physical disabilities, I have often been accused of overstating the scope of their impact, to the point of copping blame for stirring up unnecessary trouble. People believed, or at least, suspected, that while life might be more difficult in a few select areas, surely it couldn’t effect absolutely everything in the way that I suggested it did. Perhaps, then, the problem lay not with the actual task at hand, but in the fact that my perception had been tainted. Perhaps I was not truly as disabled as I claimed, but merely suffered from a sort of persecution complex. I realized that I had unintentionally, unconsciously, made the same mistake in my reading of Malala’s story.

This also helped to answer another important question: In the developed world, we often hear bickering over to what degree we still “need” the women’s empowerment movement. After all, we have full suffrage, and equality before the law. Discrimination on the matter of sex is illegal, if it can be proven. Given how much better life is for women in the developed world than the developing, is it reasonable to expect more? Are these western advocates simply suffering from a persecution complex? Certainly there are those whose concerns are more immediately applicable and actionable than others, and certainly there are those who will insist no matter how much is done, that it isn’t enough. Such is the nature of politics, and on this the women’s empowerment movement in the developed world is not any different from any other political movement. But on the general question over whether genuine, actionable, inequities exist, it seems now far less unreasonable to me to accept that there may yet be more work to be done than I might have initially been led to believe.

I expect that even this conclusion will be contentious. I expect that I shall be told in short order that I have drawn conclusions from the data which I have aggregated which are faulty, or else that the data itself is biased or misleading. On this point I concede that I am still quite young in my in-depth study of this particular field, and, as mentioned previously, far better minds than mine have devoted entire careers to ironing out the finer points. Reasonable minds may, and indeed do, disagree about specifics. However, if there is one thing which my cursory research and analysis thereof has confirmed in my mind, it is that, on matters of general policy, I would rather err on the side of empathy, choosing rather to be too trusting in the good faith of others, than to ignore and unintentionally oppress.

It follows, then, that I should find myself wholeheartedly endorsing and supporting the observation and celebration of today, International Women’s Day, and reaffirming my support for continuation and expansion of the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles.