In the midst of global poverty and extremism in the developing world, education and the empowerment of women are the transformative solutions to gender inequality worldwide, according to Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist and author of the best-selling book, “Half the Sky.”

At the Saint Mary’s College lecture series Monday night, Kristof encouraged students and community members to take action against what he called the shameful injustices inflicted on women worldwide and proposed that the solution to these human rights issues rests in the education of women and young girls.

“In terms of human rights, women are not the problem, they are the solution,” Kristof said in an interview Monday. “If you want to address problems of global poverty … then the single most effective system is to educate girls and then bring those educated women into the labor force and give them some greater control over the purse strings.”

Kristof, who said he has traveled to 140 countries reporting on such events as human trafficking, forced prostitution, maternal mortality and mass rape, found that the key to success for many of these countries is to more fully utilize their greatest unexploited natural resource, the women.

“In an equitable world, there would be more females, but this is not an equitable world and gender discrimination in much of the world is legal,” Kristof said. “When you put together this kind of lethal discrimination on childhood sex selective abortion, then you have somewhere between 60 to 100 million females who have been discriminated against to death, who are missing in the world.”

“Half the Sky,” co-authored by Kristof’s wife Sheryl Wudunn, takes its name from a Chinese proverb that says women hold up half the sky.

“I’ve learned a lot about human resilience, compassion and altruism,” Kristof said. “In Congo where I just came from, here are these women who have been driven out of their homes, who have nothing, and yet they take in orphans who have even less. I find that utterly inspiring.”

Throughout the lecture, Kristof detailed personal stories from women he has met during his travels who have become victims of human injustice but who, through the humanitarian work of agencies and governments throughout the world, have risen above their oppressors through education.

“There is no magic bullet, but the single thing that makes more of a difference than any other is education,” Kristof said.

Outlining the global agenda that needs to be addressed worldwide, Kristof emphasized the importance of combating human sex trafficking and maternal mortality, while improving micro finance and education efforts for all women.

Comparing sex trafficking to slavery in the 17th century, Kristof said more than 800,000 people are being trafficked across international borders annually, 10 times the number during African enslavement in the Western world.

After visiting two girls in a Cambodian brothel, Kristof purchased the young women as a small way of providing immediate relief and freedom from permanent enslavement.

“When you get a written receipt for a human being, that should be a disgrace on the international conscience in the 21st century,” Kristof said.

Speaking directly to the majority of students in attendance, Kristof commissioned them to engage themselves in the developing world in a hands-on way.

“Fundamentally, I’m not out to inform people so much as to galvanize them into action,” Kristof said.

“You don’t have to solve the whole problem to make a difference.”

Encouraging students to consider taking a year off before going on to graduate school or beginning their profession, Kristof ensured them that the experience would be utterly transformative.

“We’ve won the lottery of life,” Kristof said. “The question becomes how do we discharge that responsibility.”