THE POWER OF WOMEN

The Congolese gynecologist who won the 2018 Nobel Prize for aiding rape victims during the civil wars in his country depicts his inspiring journey.

A self-proclaimed feminist who often has to justify his chosen profession and life’s work to officers at the U.N. and elsewhere, Mukwege offers an impassioned argument for women’s health care and basic universal human rights. He bases the narrative on his experiences with the ravages of war, colonization, poverty, and ignorance in his own country. The author opens in his hometown of Bukavu, near the border with Rwanda. He chronicles his childhood with parents who largely eschewed the traditional roles ascribed to boys and girls, roles that devalued women’s work in the home and fields. Once he began to work with patients, Mukwege soon recognized the enormous need for women’s health care in a country with few medical doctors but high maternal and child mortality rates. After training in France, he returned to direct a hospital and then build another one in the countryside to address the catastrophic toll of rape during the civil wars that began in the late 1990s. Mukwege became an expert in obstetric fistula, and thousands of women came to him for life-saving treatment after suffering sexual violence. In his moving account of his courageous work, the author spares no detail, demonstrating the indispensable assistance he and his colleagues provided to traumatized survivors. As he writes, he sought out this work in order to combat the stigmatization and isolation of rape victims, despite the threat of death to himself and his family. “Breaking the silence about sexual violence in all its forms—harassment, rape, incest—is the essential first step in tackling the problem,” he writes. All along, he argues forcefully for the necessity of changing the education and mindsets of men throughout the world.

An important, deeply affecting account of the invaluable work of a devoted humanitarian.