Julie Ross, one of the co-authors of The Black Swan Effect: A response to gender hierarchy in the church compiled these scary statistics:
- Half the world’s population is female. They comprise 40% of the world’s workforce but own 1% of the world’s wealth.
- Seventy percent of those living in poverty in the world are female, globally.
- 100 million little girls are missing from today’s generation.
- In Brazil, its justifiable homicide to kill an unfaithful wife.
- In India, up to 50 million girls are victims of sex-selection, abortion and female infanticide.
- Rape is a primary weapon of war, especially in some African nations. About 48 women are raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo every hour.
- Child brides. One third of the world’s girls are married before the age of 18 and one in nine are married before the age of 15. Girls with higher levels of schooling are less likely to marry as children.
- In Mozambique, some 60 percent of girls with no education are married by 18, compared to 10 percent of girls with secondary schooling and less than one percent of girls with higher education.
- Girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s.
- Pregnancy is the leading cause of death worldwide for girls ages 15 to 19.
- In many cultures, girls and mothers are fed only after the men and boys.
- More than 125 million girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.
- Sex trafficking is the second largest criminal industry in the world. 80% of the victims are female.
Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, to release captives, to free the oppressed.
What should be the response of his body, the church, to these figures that represent not numbers, but people for whom Jesus died? What can we do? How can we get involved?
Adapted from Felicity Dale’s blog, Kingdom Women. Felicity Dale is the author of numerous books including The Black Swan Effect and Simply Church. She is an an advocate for women in the church and trains people to start simple, organic house churches around the world.
