Welcome to day 23 of October Justice Awareness month. If you are following along in the Prayer & Action guide, which is a free download for this month, you will quickly notice that we are not going in order. One of the reasons for this is that we are focussing heavily on Cambodia for this month and so we are talking about the injustices we faced while being on the ground and then others that are relevant to their situation. Today, from the inspiration of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book we are posting on Gender Injustice.
What does gender injustice look like? It looks like a girl getting blamed for contracting HIV/AIDS even though she was raped by a man. In the world today there are 130 million out of school youth 70% are girls 1. 2/3 of the worlds approximately 1 billion illiterate adults are women 2. 70% of the worlds poorest people are women 3. Globally 1 in 6 women world-wide have experienced rape or sexual assault 4.
It doesn’t take many more facts than this to let us know that there is a problem here. In many areas of the world, including Cambodia, women are treated as inferior to males. There is a poem in Cambodia that goes “women are like white cloth and men are like gold. If you get white cloth dirty you will never get it perfectly clean again, but if you get gold dirty you can always bring it back to its original beauty.” This is basically saying that when a women loses her virginity, either by rape or promiscuity that she will never be whole again. This is why women can so easily fall into the trap of prostitution, because they believe the lie spoken over them.
We see the degradation of women happening in our own society in the way men look at women. We also see this in the way that women are presented to us in magazines, billboards, adverts, etc. Women’s bodies are used for the excitement and thrill of men and as a result that is the way many men view women, simply as an object who is there to look good for that mans pleasure.
Today as men lets commit to look at the women in our lives with love and respect. Women are equals, created by God. Take some time today to tell the women in your life how much you appreciate them. Also, ask God to show you how He sees the women in your life and those passing by you on the street. The more we as men see women as God sees them the more our society will grow in health and less in debauchery. Women, ask God how he sees you today. Know that you are loved and the way men have looked at you in the past is not the way God sees you, your are his daughter, loved by Him.
Take some time today and reflect on these things. Then, come back and post some of the things God spoke to you about. Did you feel different today, did you treat someone different today? What changes happened in your life?
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – Trailer from HTS Vimeo on Vimeo.
