After reading the first third of Sold, I was shocked at how terribly the women are treated. They are given no say in things that affect their own lives. Nobody tells Lakshmi where she is really being sent, or what she is really going to to when she gets there. She has no idea what lies ahead for her because being a women, her right to know is very unimportant, even though it concerns her directly and will change her life forever. The women in Lakshmi's culture have been taught to think that men are dominant and superior and that women basically live to serve men. "'Even a man who gambles away what little we have on a fancy hat and new coat,' she says, 'is better than no man at all'" (page 38) Lakshmi's mother believes that this is true, because that is what her culture believes. I did research around the oppression of women in Nepal and found some shocking facts. Men do not do dishes or laundry, all chores are left to the women. It is the wife's job to take care of the husbands mother and other extended family too. Most work is never rewarded and her days are quite monotonous. She deals with everything from house work to livestock, feeding the family and watching and tending to the children. The fact I found most terrible is that Nepal is the only country where women's life expectancy is shorter than men's. She works harder then the man and dies sooner (nepalvista.com). You can tell Lakshmi sees the unfairness in this in the way she looks at how her stepfather treats her mother. Unfortunately her future its not looking any brighter than the average Nepali women... Maybe even worse.