Going to Town - Appendix A

When I realized I was writing a 6-page essay on the role of women in the middle of my blogpost on a team retreat in Rwanda, I decided to condense and separate it. 

During our session on a woman’s role in peacebuilding and our experiences at work and at home, I was frustrated all over again at hearing about my female teammates being pulled aside or called over by a group of strange men to ‘say hello,’ or being strongly encouraged at every turn to date (or marry) a co-worker simply because he’d made his interest plain.    

I hesitantly offered the idea of porting bling on your ring finger, even though it tore me up inside, but most of the women had already been thinking about it.  As it is deeply, inherently abhorrent to me that the only way to have a man leave me alone is to indicate that I belong to another man, I think I’ll put this off for a while, no matter how prevalent harassment is here.  Teaching and learning involve sacrifice, and if my sacrifice is peace of mind to indicate that I’m not interested – not because I’m married or a nun or Indian or [insert expletive here], but because I’m just not interested – then so be it. 

We watched this TED Talk during our retreat session on the role of women and I was moved to tears by the truth of it:  https://www.ted.com/talks/zainab_salbi?language=en  

Women are often the ones who ‘keep life going’ – taking care of children, providing food, working, laughing...  And all of the work they do to hold on to normalcy, joy, life is brushed off as their ‘nature.’  As though it is simple to love and care and serve to the point of death in the face of war.  I once heard a leader somewhat contemptuously note in a meeting that women need time off during pregnancy and after giving birth, and come late to work after sending their children to school because it’s their ‘nature.’

What – precisely – is difficult to understand about this?

If the main school of thought (apparently supported by the Bible, though I disagree with this reading of it), that all women are apparently designed, crafted, created to serve all men and all children at all times, then more than half the population is effectively crippled, and society grinds to a standstill.

This is not widely accepted, and that’s fine.  But when women also don’t believe it, the deepest part of me is hurt.

Men are apparently designed, crafted, and created to work, strive, and lead, so that economic difficulty results in many hanging around their homes, hanging out in public places, drinking, and aiding war – they can’t live out their immense potential, and this reflects poorly on a government, on a country. 

Through all this, women are farming, raising children, putting food on the table for their families, hoping to keep themselves and those they love safe from harm - with daily reminders that they are weak, emotional, that their reasoning is flawed – all of which is apparently part of their very nature, akin to every other beast of burden.  A woman has to do more over and above this to be recognized as intelligent, worthy, successful. 

Do you see the problem?

I know this is not universal; there are hardworking men and there are lazy women.  But the general rule of thumb is that women keep their worlds (their families) going even in situations of trauma and fear, and that should be attributed to their particular strengths and gifts, not expected and still more demanded.  In a perfect world, women would stay at home and serve their families with all their hearts.  With pride and strength and love.  But this is not a perfect world, and all men are not the caring, loving leaders they should be.  In this world, there is a place for women to lead, to teach, with all the grace she has been given, and to submit to the man that she sees as worthy.  There is also a place for men to support her in the home – in raising children, in putting food on the table – out of respect for seeing that women may do what they cannot. 

When women accept the burden of serving wholly, as well as the burden of proving themselves capable of working, of providing for themselves, without also giving men the opportunity to learn and serve, we are doing ourselves, them, and the world a disservice. 

This is not me being stubborn, hateful, ungrateful, or unbiblical - though my greatest struggle is to share my views without appearing all of these and worse.  It is a cry to remember that partnership and service should begin with acceptance and support of the most basic of our differences – in gender – before we can come anywhere near to effectively loving someone of a different colour or culture.

For reasons you’ll discover in a later post, I was given cause through this session to again admire Butters and the unique voice that he has here, though he is also somewhat dismissed as a foreigner. 

And he hasn’t even done anything all that special.

His basic recognition of boundaries and what I like and don’t like as a person, and respect of these, along with his recognition that I don’t owe him anything simply because we live in the same apartment, or because he was born male and I was born female is enough for me to feel a boundless sense of gratitude.  Especially when I learn, for example, that in another household a friend leaves his plate on the table after meals for his housemate to deal with – not because she is his wife or relative (she’s not), or because she stays at home all day (she doesn’t) - but simply because he is male, she is female, and that is the culture.

Did I mention that she also prepares the meals?

We currently have a mission team visiting our local church from the States, and I was surprised to note that most of them are young women.  I realised then that I was beginning to fall into the same trap – of believing that only men, especially older men, have a voice that can be heard.  It is a message that even my church, with a pastor whom I deeply respect, supports because it does not accept women in leadership roles within the church.  A friend once shared that she'd been inspired by the sermon on Sunday, which had called to mind a devotion she’d read that morning.  However, she’d stayed quiet in church because she didn’t want to overstep her bounds and perhaps ‘teach.’

While I think she was just being sensitive and careful about taking part in a local community as a foreigner, the basic principle remains lodged like a splinter:  If women across countries and nations are never to teach men in a structured, recognised way in church, then why would they have a right to teach or lead anywhere?  If a woman’s natural role is to take care of (any and all) men at home, then why should we encourage her to study, to take an active role at work, to be a leader in peacebuilding, to expect dignity and care from men?

Every time I struggle with topics like this, I’m reminded of one of my favourite hymns growing up in a tiny Anglican church in the Rocky Mountains populated almost entirely by gentle, quiet seniors: 

Brother, let me be your servant

Let me be as Christ to you

Pray that I might have the grace to let you be my servant too