When I first saw the cover of the New York Times Magazine’s “Women’s Empowerment Issue,” I had a classic case of the side-eye: a presumably American white woman with the “all in a day’s work” smirk donning indigenous clothing with arms sprawling across 5 brown children in a field of green pastures. Emblazoned beneath her was the headline “Do It Yourself: Foreign Aid.” But after I got past my smh moment and my suspicions of yet again another sequel in the never-ending saga of white saviordom, I plowed through several articles that were insightful, gripping and helpful to the conversation on women’s rights.

Yes, Nicholas D. Kristof gives his hat-tip to a Harvard-educated, World-Bank-working young woman who ...