Women’s Roles, Worldwide – Rev. Dr. Liz Mosbo VerHage

I find it noteworthy that in the developing world, research has shown that increasing women’s health, education, and economic viability greatly increases the overall health and success of communities. Micro-loans, education on child bearing and rearing, and nutritional information has a much better chance of affecting the rest of the family and the whole community when women are the entry points. It is also women, mostly of color, who are often the ones around the world who end up bearing a disproportionate amount of the poverty burden: by being exploited, bearing children as young teenagers, being the recipient of STDs or AIDS from a traveling partner, caring for children and other family members, as well as working in the field, retreiving water, and cooking and cleaning at home. Several female African teenagers I met in South Africa confided that they didn’t want to get married, because many people’s attitudes were that a married man can have as many partners as he wants, while married women cannot and are expected to always acquiesce, no questions asked, when their husbands want to have sex with them. Faithful married women, then, have no safety net to guard them from getting AIDS or passing it on to their children, not to mention the emotional and spiritual cost that these double standards set up for those individuals. All of these roles – the option to positively build up families, and the negative cost that too many women incur – deeply impact a society’s health.

A recent article covers the increase of “fistulas” around the world – the obstetric nightmare where (mainly) young girls who are unable to deliver their first child have a dead baby lodged in their birth canal and broken urethras and/or bowels from the pressure of a failed delivery. They need surgery and are often incontinant, in great pain, shunned socially, and obviously have the added pain of a failed delivery. This article is not just meant to be gross or show an extreme issue, it points out a real health issue that women are facing every day around the world. Many things contribute to this suffering – pregnancy at too young of an age, social norms about sex and being married, limited ideas

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about women’s roles and empowerment, education, health care access, community support, faithful interpretations of caring for married partners, reasons that men have to leave their own communities to work elsewhere, lack of economic viability in communities to support local health care staff, etc. They are all linked.

Article excerpt: “The fistulas point to the broader plight of millions of African women: poverty; early marriage; maternal deaths; a lack of rights, independence and education; a generally low standing. One in 18 Nigerian women dies during childbirth, compared with one in 2,400 in Europe, the Population Fund says. A larger share of African women die in childbirth than anywhere else in the world.”

I am still learning about all of the pieces that come together to create health or brokeness in poverty-stricken communities, but part of what the Millenium Development Goals point to is this inter-connected nature of fighting poverty and brokenness. MDG 3 and 5 both point directly to educating and empowering women, and improving maternal health. These are linked to eradicating extreme poverty, stopping the spread of diseases, acheving universal primary education, etc. because success in one area feeds into success in the others areas.

I am sickened that women, some much younger then me, have stories like this to share. I know that at one level, changing this reality is complicated and takes time and involves many players all doing their part, including the women themselves. On a more important level, I would argue that we need to eradicate this and related suffering/loss of life, because it is unacceptable. It is wrong. It is not how life was intended for these young girls, their babies, or their communities. As U2’s “Crumbs From Your Table,” says, ‘where you are born should not determine whether you live or die’. I pray that we will know how to act, be daring in our compassion toward the multiple health crisis that can seem too overwhelming and too removed, do justice in our work and in our churches whenever we can speak out about international aid and debt/trade justice, and that we can faithfully be witnesses to these lives and deaths.

4 thoughts on “Women’s Roles, Worldwide”

The news article was explicit and I feel a little ill right now. How horrific. Pregnacy can be painful enough as it is!

Liz, Thank you so much for addressing the ‘feminization of poverty,’ and both the complexivity and simplicity of fighting it. When I went to a workshop on AIDS led by CHANGE (Center for Health and Gender Equity) last year, I really had my eyes opened. At that workshop, I learned of the narrow categories within PEPAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a bilateral AIDS iniatitive to 15 countries) that inhibit effective work against AIDS in Africa. Under PEPFAR, youth cannot receive comprehensive AIDS education, or information about condoms. While this ideological restriction is disputable based on one’s beliefs, you’ll probably never guess who is in the youth category. It’s people 12 to 22 years old, so that means people who are most likely to be sexually active, even married, and they don’t have access to information about condoms. This really strikes me as the type of program we as people concerned with faith and justice need to hold accountable, especially considering that the average age for marriage in Africa is fairly young, at least around 17. The Bush admnistration no doubt would agree in providing condoms to married couples, but under PEPFAR’s strict terms, these couples don’t even have access to this information. This AIDS Iniative highlights the need to be thoughtful and culturally relative when doing development, the need to give people who need information access, and our need as a responsive faithful people to be aware of these matters of life and death.

Yeah, Erin – I am just amazed sometimes as how we want to simplify isues like poverty, sex, suffering, marriage, disease, etc. Of course there are important moral issues involved, but biology and unjust social structures should not determine that the women in a community are the ones who (almost) always bear the burden, and have no voice or place of justice to share that. Old testament prophets – and Jesus – most often talked about helping orphans, widows, and foreigners – the triad of people with the least amount of voice in society and who were the most vulnerable. Above and woven within all other debates on the hows and whys of morality in this area, we should still support and speak for the suffering and voiceless.

I also just read an article by the “new Desmond TuTu” in Sojourners where he talks about the Micah Challenge and how he would rather support women’s organizations in his own country and why. I’ll look for it and link it in the next day or two…..

Liz – Oprah did a story on women with fistulas over a year ago. It was excellent. She highlighted their plight and the amazing doctors who are working to restore these women back to health. I have a friend from Yale who grew up in Tanzania. Her parents were both missionaries there and her dad worked as a doctor in the local hospital. His whole practice was devoted to women suffering from fistulas…he would perform surgeries on the women so they could function in society. Many are outcast from their communities. Thanks for highlighting this. I’m giving a talk tonight at Azusa Pacific about MDG #3…women’s equality. Your post is helping me prep.

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