A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power

In the highly acclaimed bestselling A Call to Action, President Jimmy Carter addresses the world's most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights: the ongoing discrimination and violence against women and girls.

President Carter was encouraged to write this book by a wide coalition of leaders of all faiths. His urgent report covers a system of discrimination that extends to every nation. Women are deprived of equal opportunity in wealthier nations and "owned" by men in others, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage, and genital cutting. The most vulnerable and their children are trapped in war and violence.

A Call to Action addresses the suffering inflicted upon women by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare. Key verses are often omitted or quoted out of context by male religious leaders to exalt the status of men and exclude women. And in nations that accept or even glorify violence, this perceived inequality becomes the basis for abuse.

Carter draws upon his own experiences and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions to demonstrate that women around the world, more than half of all human beings, are being denied equal rights. This is an informed and passionate charge about a devastating effect on economic prosperity and unconscionable human suffering. It affects us all.

Author: Jimmy Carter
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 03/10/2015
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.10w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781476773964


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 08/23/2015 pg. 36

About the Author
Jimmy Carter was the thirty-ninth President of the United States, serving from 1977 to 1981. In 1982, he and his wife founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people around the world. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and was the author of thirty books, including A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety; A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power; An Hour Before Daylight: Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood; and Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. He died in 2024 at the age of 100.