Feminine Poverty

(This is an article that I wrote for Boundless last year right after my Africa trip. It is referring to trips to Ethiopia in 2008 and then again in 2009.)

Emebet lives with her older sister, mother, and grandmother in a dirt home in a slum without running water or electricity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her father died when she was very young, leaving her family without a source of income or a way to pay for her education. One of her closest playmates is HIV-positive. At 5 years old, Emebet's future is fairly bleak.

But for the grace of God....

I met Emebet last year when I filmed a piece about the local church in Addis Ababa that works with the charity group, Covenant Mercies, to help children like Emebet to get the nutritional, medical, and educational help they need. She charmed us all as she twirled, danced and giggled. In particular, she stole my heart. Immediately, I asked if she could be enrolled and if I could sponsor her. When I returned to Addis Ababa on another film project, I came with a bag of gifts for Emebet and her family. I was relieved to see her flourishing — with healthier skin and hair and cleaner clothes. Her family looked better, too, and received us with gracious hospitality.

This year, we filmed a scene at Emebet's house so I had to have everyone sign a release giving permission to use their images in the documentary. Emebet's grandmother listened diligently to the interpreter and then inked her finger with my pen to put her fingerprint on the signature line. It was an awkward moment that underscored the importance of Emebet's future education. Without literacy, Emebet and her sister may not be able to break the family's cycle of poverty.

In fact, Emebet and her sister are emblematic of the 21st-century anti-poverty focus. [Read the rest of the article on Boundless.org.]

Comments

[Sue]

Carolyn,

I know that in the past you have blogged about women laying down their rights and killing an attitude of entitlement. How would you reconcile this teaching with loans to women.

And why do missions not direct the money through the "head" of the family as the main provider. Thanks for your thoughts.

[Sue]

When you come to Vancouver I hope that you will keep in mind that rape in marriage has only been a legal crime since the 1980's in Canada. Many women alive today have been violated within their marriage without recourse to the law, so we don't think of feminism as something that is no longer needed.

Perhaps things are quite different in the United States, but here there is much work to do in helping victims of violence.

Since submission is known to increase violence, I hope you will soft pedal this. Perhaps at some point in the future when women are no longer victims of crime, submission might be a useful teaching.

Please remember that every audience includes real people, some with their hidden lives of violence. Thanks.

[Carolyn McCulley]

Sue, I appreciate you raising the issue of abuse. If I'm correct in reading between the lines, it seems you might have been a victim of abuse yourself. If so, I'm truly sorry to hear it. That is sinful and is never to be condoned. In fact, at the end of Radical Womanhood, I talked a bit about abuse and included some statements and resources about it. It is a topic worthy of a whole book itself, so I couldn't do more at that point than cover it briefly. But a woman is never to submit to physical abuse. In fact, a woman is never to follow her husband into sin. Scriptures call women to submit to their own husbands "as unto the Lord," which is an intelligent, loving response to a husband's leadership in order to glorify the Lord--not a man.

It is true that various segments of the church have not done well in confronting abuse in their congregations. It is shameful, but it also reinforces how much we truly need a Savior. I agree with you that in many cases feminists did succeed in drawing attention to this topic. I don't know if you've had a chance to read my book, but one of my premises is that we can neither uncritically accept all tenets of feminism, nor dismiss the whole movement. There have been positive contributions from feminism. But overall, it has embraced a non-biblical ideology, which is why it is a topic worth exploring and understanding by Christian women.