The United Methodist Church in Mission:
Working for Women's Rights in Kenya

A bright spot recently at St. Paul's is a heightened awareness of discrimination based on gender. Women may be ridiculed in class when they try to enter into a discussion. Some male lecturers use examples in class that put women in a very negative light. They never portray men negatively.

The female students who seem so passive and content have a lot of anger boiling beneath the surface. They are intelligent and gifted, so to be treated as second-class citizens--or even as slaves--is infuriating. Because the Bible has often been used to "keep them in their 'proper' place," my husband Ron spoke with the women about the many liberating passages that support equality and rights for all people.

It's hard to even think about all the violence that is perpetrated against the girl-child in Kenya--from female genital mutilation (still widely practiced in our Methodist Church area) to the marrying of 11- or 12-year-olds to old men, to the failure to send daughters to school and the general demeaning of girls. Some husbands say that a wife wouldn't know her husband loved her if he didn't beat her!

Recently, a male student who is Methodist gave a presentation about the oppression of women in his ethnic group. To have a male student criticize the patriarchal society and defend the equality of women so eloquently was encouraging. We pray for the changing of people's hearts on this matter of women's rights.