Chasing the rains: why gender equality matters in development

An encounter with a Maasai woman, leaves Jane Cacouris pondering another encounter at a well.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

Girls stand in the northern Kenyan scrubland holding water bottles.

Tucker Tangeman via Unsplash.

Rural communities living within Kenya’s vast, desolate and beautiful arid and semi-arid Lands have suffered over the past two years from the drought that has hit the entire region. Rainfall during the “rainy seasons” has been in decline, and with more than 80% of Kenyans reliant on agriculture to survive; livelihoods and food security are at risk. Livestock numbers have depleted, and the cattle that are still alive are underfed and unproductive. Women and girls, their skin shining with perspiration as they carry yellow jerry cans strapped to their heads, trek for up to tens of kilometres a day.

They are in search of life-giving water for their livestock and families, returning home each day with shoes and feet scuffed with sun-scorched red dust. This is not an image from decades ago… before we started working towards global sustainable development goals and COP targets. No, this is happening right now in our world.

Speaking to a Maasai woman living in a remote part of rural Kenya on a recent work assignment earlier this year, I asked her about the impact the drought was having on her community who are mainly rely on nomadic cattle herding to live. She explained that the men were leaving for months on end in search of pasture for their cattle; “they are chasing the rains” and leaving women to run the households and try to make ends meet, looking after children and extended family.

But the women at home lack authority to make any decisions; about the land, about supplementing income with other employment, or about crops or food choices. They are disempowered by the social and cultural norms within their strict patriarchal Maasai society, and unable to stem the cascading flow of worsening poverty.

Extreme weather events also increase the work burden of women and girls and their ability to perform their everyday tasks. They must walk further to collect firewood and water due to dwindling resources.

ccording to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, people in poverty are more susceptible to climate change than wealthier people. Their livelihoods and assets are more exposed and they are more vulnerable to natural disasters that bring disease, crop failure, spikes in food prices and death. The World Bank estimates that without immediate action, climate change could push 120 million more people into poverty by 2030. And of those, the threat of climate change on agriculture in Africa could push 30 million people into extreme poverty.

Gender inequalities present in many countries and societies exacerbate this already existing vulnerability of the poor to climate change. And women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate change. For example, an increase in child marriage has been observed in communities as a means of coping financially when a disaster occurs, such as a drought or flood. Families raise much needed additional funds through dowries. Extreme weather events also increase the work burden of women and girls and their ability to perform their everyday tasks. They must walk further to collect firewood and water due to dwindling resources. Women often lack land rights that are passed down through generations along patrilineal lines, as is the case in Kenya. Women’s access to climate emergency funding - in areas where such funding is available – is therefore limited as they don’t possess the collateral, in the form of land rights and ownership. In short, women and girls fare significantly worse than men and boys when it comes to the impacts of poverty and climate change on wellbeing.

So what does Jesus think about gender inequality?

Jesus treated all people with equal love and respect. Gospel writer Luke, records that He talked with respect about the Samaritans who were seen by the Jews as racial inferiors, he reached out to prostitutes, and to lepers who were social outcasts. He without doubt had a special sensitivity to those on the margins and towards those who are poor.

And Jesus goes one step further. He also demonstrates a radical approach to gender equality in the Bible. For example, John, the writer of another gospel, describes his encounter with a woman at a well. As Jesus passes through a town on his journey through Samaria, he is tired and stops to sit by a well. When a Samaritan woman approaches to draw water, he asks her for a drink, and begins a conversation that leads to Jesus showing her that he is the son of God. This speaks about gender equality in several ways.

First, Jesus spoke to the woman at a time when it was forbidden for a man to talk to a woman in public, even a wife or daughter. Jesus was also a rabbi which would typically create multiple barriers between him and the woman; in terms of race, gender and lifestyle. But these things were not barriers for Jesus. He spoke to the woman as a human being. He demonstrated equality.

Second, Jesus is vulnerable with her, asking her for a drink because he is thirsty. Here is a man asking a woman for help, openly admitting he needed something from her.

Third, Jesus ignores The Talmud, a Jewish commentary on the Pentateuch, that taught it was immoral to teach a woman the Law.

“Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water”.

He discusses theology with her. Jesus did not regard his Jewish racial identity or being male as superior. Jesus clearly demonstrates through his actions in this passage that all who trust in Christ are equally God’s children, valued without differentiation or discrimination based on race or gender.

As Jesus shows in this passage in John’s gospel, he doesn’t consider women feebler, less capable or less intelligent than men. Throughout the Bible, he continually recognises their value. In parallel, much evidence shows that greater gender parity in the world today would make it a richer and more sustainable place for human beings, biodiversity and the environment. Improved nutrition, food security, livelihoods and health come from greater access, benefit-sharing mechanisms and employment opportunities for women.

For example, when women have greater control over household resources, spending patterns shift towards catering more for families’ food and education. According to the OECD, in Kenya and Malawi, levels of malnutrition are found to be lower among children in female-headed households. An NGO project that worked with women in agriculture across six countries found that when women were given ownership of land and when women’s participation was improved in farmer’s collectives, income from agriculture increased between 40 and 165 per cent. If vulnerabilities caused by poverty are reduced by supporting and recognising women as equal to men, this translates into households and communities that are less vulnerable and more resilient to the effects of climate change. It is all connected.

Humanity can not “chase the rains” forever. In our race to find more stability and sustainability in this changing world, perhaps it’s time to take Jesus’ lead and really recognise and value women equally to men, both as people, and for the contribution they can make to lives, livelihoods and our world.

Article

Change

Race

3 July 2023

5 min read

Equiano: How an ex-captive became the voice of abolition

How did a formerly enslaved person think about their faith, freedom, and vocation? Luke Bretherton explores the politics and theology of Olaudah Equiano, whose story was central to the abolitionist movement and continues to resonate today.

Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is a Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano from the frontispiece of his biography

The most significant political revolution of the modern era was not that of America, France, Haiti, Russia, or China. It was the longer lasting, deeper rooted, and more pervasive revolution that is “humanitarianism.” Rather than a change in one form of political order, it was a revolution of moral sentiment that affects all political orders. The fruit of this revolution is that the acme of moral action is no longer love for a proximate “brother” but love for a remote “other.”

A foundational text in this revolution is Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789). Equiano, a formerly enslaved person, was a key activist in the movement to abolish slavery. Published on the eve of the Parliamentary enquiry into the slave trade and three months before the French Revolution, his autobiography was hugely popular, running to nine editions and numerous printings during his lifetime.

His autobiography is vital reading because the abolition movement in which he played such a key part is widely understood by historians as foundational to the birth of humanitarianism. It is also seen as providing the template for other, subsequent movements for social justice.

Equiano’s work and its impact needs situating within what is called the Second Great Awakening, a moment of religious fervour on both sides of the Atlantic. Dated as beginning in 1790, the Second Great Awakening represented a huge revival in popular Christianity. Out of it came modern evangelicalism. However, unlike its contemporary expression, the evangelicalism of the late 18th and early 19th century was a key influence on a number of movements for social reform, including the abolition movement.

In his narrative, he portrays himself as the true Christian and the true human. When he encounters the European slave traders on their slave ships, they are the real savages, and despite what they say, they are not Christians.

At the heart of Equiano’s Narrative are two stories of conversion. The first is his conversion to Christianity. The second is his conversion to abolitionism. These two conversions are interrelated. Through his conversion to Christianity, he discovers an understanding of what it means to be human that leads him to see all forms of slavery as wrong. This judgment against slavery includes not just the industrial scale form of slavery driven by the plantation economy, but also what some see as the more benign forms of his own Eboe society in West Africa.

Through his conversion narrative he gains possession of himself, his history, and his people as historical subjects able to speak and act for themselves. He becomes a political actor contributing to and a leading figure within a new political form – the social movement – that contested a dominant feature of the political economy – slavery. Crucially, he refuses and refutes the racialized ways in which Africans are negatively portrayed. Rather than a chattel, he is a Christian and a citizen with a story to tell. He is not merely biology to be exploited. He has a biography. And he is one whose testimony stands as evidence in the case against slavery. In staging this claim he reverses the order of who listens and who speaks – he speaks and English readers listen and take instruction from him.

In his narrative, he portrays himself as the true Christian and the true human. When he encounters the European slave traders on their slave ships, they are the real savages, and despite what they say, they are not Christians. He also represents himself in the text as a new St Paul. He’s an apostle calling others to discover both Christ and their humanity in their encounter with him through reading his story.

Equiano’s is a profound and original work that constantly draws on Biblical frames of reference to both denounce the world as it is and announce a new world. The Bible for him is simultaneously a means of demanding recognition and offering critique.

In the frontispiece of the book he is pictured as holding a Bible which is open at the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Acts chronicles the adventures of the apostles after Christ's death and resurrection. The frontispiece is the key to understanding the story Equiano tells. He is not Odysseus who returns home after many trials and tribulations. Rather, he is St Paul: one who becomes an apostle, taking on a new name and identity in the process. Like St Paul, Equiano suffers whipping, imprisonment (in the hold of a ship), storms, and travels in chains all for the sake of preaching the Gospel. And like St Paul, who ends his journey in Acts in Rome, Equiano’s journey leads him finally to London, the centre of his imperial world. From there he writes an epistle addressed to the churches who are failing to be faithful to the Gospel. In doing so, he appeals, like St Paul, to a universal humanity now available in Christ, in whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

The most significant political revolution of the modern era was not that of America, France, Haiti, Russia, or China. It was the longer lasting, deeper rooted, and more pervasive revolution that is “humanitarianism.”

There are those who read Equiano as simply a stooge for colonialism and capitalism. Yet they fail to convince. Such readings deny any connection to the abolition movement. And rather than being someone who is reclaiming his voice and agency, they turn him into a faceless and voiceless subject of forces beyond his control.

To dismiss Equiano is to fail to see the truly revolutionary nature of the text he wrote. In his autobiography, Equiano describes the Christian masters who brutally tortured their slaves for the slightest offense, the ubiquitous rape of women, including very young girls, and the theft from slaves who had little or nothing. Alongside and in stark contrast to this brutality, exploitation, and alienation, Equiano narrates an alternative world, one characterized by intimacy and connection. In this world, he becomes friends with women and children, and forms equal partnerships with white men. The vision of freedom he presents does not entail violently taking control of the state (as was the pattern set by the French revolution). That vision of revolution simply changes who is in control of the state and the economy but does not change the basic form and character of relations between people.

The freedom Equiano portrays is neither structural nor economic. Rather, he bears witness to a revolution of intimacy and sentiment. His life story embodies a changed structure of feeling, one where in place of the rape, whipping, chains, fear, disgust, and disdain that rules relations between blacks and whites there is the possibility of mutuality and respect. Equiano’s autobiography continues to reverberate as it calls us to a conversion of our hearts and mind so that we encounter others––no matter who they are or where they come from––as neither objects to exploit nor enemies to be feared but as neighbours in need of care. Such neighbour love may well be a fragile basis for hope in a world of carnage and desolation still living in the after lives of slavery. Nevertheless, it is as revolutionary now as it was in Equiano’s day.