For one thing, the effect of education on a woman's future and opportunities is staggering. We may have lost sight of this in the U.S., where women have made rapid gains in the last 100 years, and where we take for granted that, at least in theory, girls should have all of the educational and career opportunities that boys do. But worldwide, of the 880 million illiterate adults, two-thirds are women. In Nigeria, despite its oil wealth, many girls receive only six months of school for their entire lifetimes. In areas of the Horn of Africa, girls don't go to school for fear of being abducted and forced to marry.
Again, concerns like these aren't even on the radar screen of most Americans. But let's peel back national identities and try to examine this from a purely human point of view. Otherwise we get mired down in arguments about "equal rights" and "equal pay" and "special rights" and "gender bias, all of which distract us from the truths, which are:
- Education makes women better parents. A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five.
- The World Bank says an extra year of education nets a 20% increase in earnings as an adult.
- There are 31 million girl children who are of school age who are not attending school.
- Girls who are educated end up having fewer children, lower rates of HIV and rates of AIDS transmission to their children, and healthier children.
So there are cultural pressures that work to marginalize women and girls, pressures that must be curbed with intentionality. And as soon as we relax those efforts, women and girls are in danger of losing the ground they've gained. [Alert: If you think I'm saying women can't achieve things by hard work, relax - that's not my point at all. Nor am I making any kind of point about women with careers vs. wives & mothers. Here again, it's helpful to broaden our focus beyond the United States: there's a vast difference between a poor woman in sub-Saharan Africa who has no access to education or career options and a woman in a developed nation who chooses to be a stay-at-home mom.]
You and I might call that package of pressures "sin" - part of our collective fallen condition. After all, being female is not itself a sin. God "created them male and female", the Bible says in Genesis 1:26. And historically, Christianity has done as much - I daresay more - than any other movement to dignify and raise the status of women. So it's part of our tradition to stand by and stand up for people who the world puts down. "Many who are last will be first, and the first will be last" in the Kingdom of God, and "whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be made great."
So as standard-bearers of that tradition, we are bound to continue to uphold and protect the dignity of women, by advocating for the health, education, and opportunity of girls worldwide. In our culture, of course, girls face obstacles of a different sort. They are pressured to accept unrealistic body image ideals, pressured to become sexualized too young, pressured not to appear too smart in school, pressured to not pursue certain careers that are male-dominated. We dignify them when we create environments and bring alongside mentors who allow these girls to be who they really are - rather than silently conforming to who the culture says they ought to be.
Our high school ministry at North Coast Calvary Chapel runs an event every other year called "Unveiling". It's a conference for high school-aged girls that aims to "unveil" the lies our culture tells girls about what they are and can and should become. This year's event is November 15-16. If you have a daughter that age or know a teenage girl, send her. It only costs $39. Meanwhile, as we work with girls in 4th, 5th and 6th grades, girls who are just embarking on the journey of adolescence, the job before us is to launch them into middle school with both eyes open, hopefully to keep them from buying those lies in the first place. But we're fighting: fighting culture that wants to define them, fighting inertia that says, "we'll never change it", and fighting a short-sighted vision that expects girls to suffer, rather than thrive.
