Facebook game aims to draw attention to women’s issues

>>> women's week officially kicks off today. there is a any twist to those efforts, using social media . facebook 's new game was called half the sky . turning oppression into opportunities for women worldwide. joining me, pulitzer prize winning columnist nick kristoff. coauthor of the book. let me start by setting the stage for people who don't know what this is. what is " half the sky ." ?

>> the argument is written by my wife and i. and our argument is that the central moral charlg for this century is empowering women around the world, educating girls and getting them into the labor force .out of the margins. that is where you get leverage. and, you know, we were excited about the book. it was the number one "new york times" best seller. it was a documentary on pbs. we really wanted to get a broader audience.

>> the documentary was amazing. i'm going to have to read that, as well. but this is ground breaking to do a game like this. how does this work and why this, why now?

>> cheryl and i wanted to reach beyond the choir. one of the problems with the book and frankly a documentary is by and large, those who are going to reader it or watch it are probably those who are already sympathetic to the cause. so many people spend so many times on games, we thought, maybe there's an audience there. we asked our agent, who owns the game rights? we had no idea. and it turns out we did so we gave them to --

>> it turns out we did.

>> who knew? so we gave them to a nonprofit called games for change and they have devised this facebook game. 300 million people play games on facebook . we hope this is going to be a new audience, way toes build a broader aus audience who cares about the issues and can make a difference.

>> there was a lot of talk when hillary clinton stepped down about what that would mean, the change in the foreign policy team, what that would mean. where do we stand on women's rights and is it a big lot loss for hillary clinton not to be secretary of state any more?

>> i think there's been tremendous progress. you see aid organizations focusing on women in power. the pentagon in afghanistan , they saw that in districts where more girls were going to school, fewer american troops are getting killed. so they became advocates.

>> isn't that amazing? that's a fact you have to stop and let sink in. girls are going to school and it's better for the troops.

>> and it used to be so incredible to see these hard bitten u.s. generals one moment talking about air strikes against the taliban and the next moment talking about getting girls in school.

>> as someone who has done so much on this, and i'm very interested about this u.n. report despite an overall drop in civilian casualties, there was a 20% increase in women or girls killed or injured in afghanistan , most, obviously, were the target of the taliban and with the u.s. decreasing its presence, how concerned are you about what's going on there and how do we turn these nebs around 12347.

>> i am concerned about where we go in afghanistan and education in particular is the single most important metric. and education for boys, but it's girls who are going to be most marginalized. if we miss educating those girls in afghanistan in this decade for the next 30, 40, 50 years, they are going to be in society and illiterate. there are way toes educate girls , even in southern afghanistan , even in taliban controlled areas using pakistan books, using females and negotiating with the taliban . and we hope that the game is going to be one more source of advocacy on officials worldwide to emphasize the importance of that kind of girl's education.

>> how can people find it? go to facebook .

>> facebook .com/halfthegame or in the facebook index --

>> half the sky or half the game?

>> half the game or search half the sky game.

>> so good to see you, nick. thanks for coming in.

>> great to be back.