China is one of the lenses WuDunn and Kristof use to highlight issues affecting women and girls in their book, Half the Sky. Issues that Chinese women face include a lack of investment in education in poor rural areas, gender imbalance due to forced or sex-selective abortions, and discrimination in the workplace. Yet the authors also use China to illustrate the vast improvements that have been made for women over time and their consequent effects. The knowledge that Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof gained about the status of women and girls during their time living in China as journalists helped to solidify the urgent need to change perceptions about gender globally. The authors write: "China has traditionally been one of the more repressive and smothering places for girls, and we could see hints of this in Sheryl's own family history." When Sheryl's grandfather's first wife could not bear sons, he married another wife who could, forgetting about the family who came before Sheryl's own. While Chinese women do still face discrimination and more traditional views about women overall, the authors acknowledge that China offers maternity benefits, Chinese men are beginning to do more household work, and Chinese women are often leading decision-making in the home. Even more importantly, the authors show that the "emancipation" of women has allowed for China's tremendous growth. In fact, according to the book, 80 percent of the workers in China's coastal factories are female. They also write about a young girl in rural China who could not afford her $13 school fee. After mobilizing donors from their news articles, the school could now offer scholarships to keep girls in school. The young girl was able to stay in school and now is an entrepreneur. By illuminating changes in China, WuDunn and Kristof are able to thread together their main argument that investing in and caring about women and girls worldwide, aside from a very credible moral case, has exponential benefits.