Two days after returning from Sudan, Nicholas Kristof trekked to Oxford to share his views on the discrimination of women in the third world.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist addressed sex trafficking, mass rape and the maternal health of women in third world countries in his speech, "The Second Sex in the Third World."

According to Kristof, the lecture marked the first time he has talked on this subject. He and his wife will be releasing a book on the topic early in 2009.

Kristof said the paramount moral challenge for the 21st century is gender inequity in developing and underdeveloped countries. He compared this to challenges in recent history, saying slavery was the prevailing moral challenge of the 19th century, as was totalitarianism in the 20th century.

"In most of the world, gender inequity is very much a matter of life and death," Kristof said.

Kristof said that one of the things he is notorious for was buying two girls from a brothel in Cambodia and taking them back to their home villages after interviewing them for a column.

Kristof explained that on an earlier trip to Cambodia as a reporter, he met two teenage girls in a brothel who became the focus of his article. He said the situation seemed incredibly unequal and even exploitative and left him very uncomfortable. He said he did not want to feel that way again, which is why he paid for the two girls.

"I got receipts from the brothel owners," Kristof said. "It's an extraordinary world where in the 21st century you can get a receipt for purchasing another human being."

According to Kristof, a lot of problems in the world have improved over time, but sex trafficking has worsened. Kristof cited globalization, the growth of markets in former communist countries and AIDS as reasons for this problem.

The second issue Kristof addressed in his speech is mass rape-especially in Darfur.

"If you killed people, (that leaves) an inconvenient pile of bodies that you (have) to explain later," Kristof said. "But there is such a stigma toward rape in the area, (that it) created a situation in which rape terrorized people more than everything else."

Kristof said that in some regions, especially where tribal cleavages exist, raping women is an effective way for one group to terrorize members of another. Kristof added that rape also breaks the tribal structure because the men are not able to protect the women.

"Rape has been one of the weapons that is … part of the arsenal that oppressive governments have used," Kristof said.

Kristof also addressed maternal health and mortality in the developing world, which he believes is an issue that does not get a lot of attention.

"The basic, plain, vanilla issue of women giving birth and surviving is something that gets very little attention or support either among donor governments in the West or among African governments or poor governments in Asia," Kristof said.

Kristof said that the issue is not visible because the victims are poor, rural and female. According to Kristof, this is a problem that can be solved.

"Once a minute, somewhere in the world, a woman dies in childbirth," Kristof said. "(This is) completely unnecessarily. And in addition to those women who are dying, you get perhaps 10 times that many who are injured in childbirth."

This is opposed to women in Western countries, in which a woman's risk of dying in childbirth during her lifetime is about one in 20,000, Kristof said.

Kristof said that there is a risk that people will see women in the third world only as a problem because of all of the wretched things that are happening to them.

"The message I'd rather leave you with is that girls are not the problem, but they're the solution," Kristof said.

Kristof said women are much more likely to spend money on education or to start a small family business, both of which will have beneficial economic returns.

Kristof also said that local leaders and grassroots efforts are the key to solving the problem and not a reliance on United Nations conferences and government bodies.

Senior Meg Maynard said that she thought Kristof's speech was very interesting. She added that she did not expect him to speak about the development of poorer countries, especially in terms of gender.

"I did expect him to speak on an international issue, just not specifically gender," Maynard said.

Junior Katherine Bouloukos said that at first she wasn't looking forward to going to Kristof's speech, but by the end of it she did not want to leave.

"It really touched home to how different my life is compared to some of these other women in the world and it opened my eyes that people actually do live like this," Bouloukos said.