image courtesy of http://www.saveone.net

There is an old adage:  “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”, implying that the woman’s role as nurturer and care-taker is imperative in creating leadership and molding those who will command and manage in the next generation.  It is becoming increasingly clear, though, that the role of women is also essential in creating jobs, sustaining education and economies and helping to lead the developing world in out of poverty.

Joel Kotkin’s Women Ascendent: Where Females Are Rising The Fastest points out that women are quickly rising in the 21st century as business owners, not just workers.  And business owners put other people to work:  they create jobs.  As Bpeace Founder and CEO Toni Maloney says, “Jobs are the bridge to everything.  A family’s ability to feed their children, send them to school, and propel their community up the path to peace and prosperity.  It’s business that builds that bridge.” (see “How Business Can Make a Difference for Women in War-Stricken Countries”)

In her interview with PovertyCure, Eva Muraya of Kenya spoke of her struggle to provide for her family following her husband’s death.  She knew she had a responsibility to her children, but also believed she had more to offer her community at large:  “I think the most sustainable way is for opportunity to be created, so that people can engage in enterprise…  If you had employed five people, if your business grows, then you will then employ twelve and eighteen and thirty, and a hundred. It’s happened in my business experience. A hundred families are being supported by Color Creations to date, directly. I haven’t even begun to talk about the families supported by the creditors and suppliers that I work with, or the other stakeholders in my business. That’s just one business.”

At the same time that women are emerging as strong and capable leaders in developing nations, we are faced with the awful fact that baby girls have been and are being killed at an alarming rate in utero simply because they are girls.  In certain areas of the world, boys are “valued” more highly than girls because of cultural norms and economic realities.  For instance, a poor family may not have the capacity to pay a dowry for a girl in marriage; this is not an issue for a male heir.  However, The Economist article on “Gendercide” warns that women are now “missing in the millions” and that we are seeing the bitter fruits of “lopsided generations” in many countries.

Let’s be clear:  baby girls are not valuable simply because they can grow up and make money.  Baby girls are valuable because, like each human being, they are made in the image and likeness of God, are imbued with dignity and are each a unique creation of the Creator.  However, we are doing our world a disservice if we think that women don’t also have a great deal to offer the nations of the world in terms of education, entrepreneurship, business creation and development. As Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute points out, a gender imbalance can leave a country with “a growing army of unmarriageable, underprivileged, and quite possibly deeply discontented young men in its midst”, and that “it is difficult to see how this could prove a plus for either economic performance or social cohesion.” (ibid)

image courtesy of http://www.ifdc.org

Women are not simply rocking the cradle; they are building bridges in the developing world.  Those bridges link families on the one side to education, jobs, stable communities, and sustainability on the other.  Without the passion, energy, drive and dedication of half the world’s population, we will not only have a lot fewer cradles to rock, we will have a lot fewer bridges.  And without those bridges, we leave people stranded in poverty, with no way to cross over into a better life where education, work and stability of life and economy are the norm.

---

Related Voices ↓

• 

  Eva Muraya — Business & Community Development

  Entrepreneur, Kenya

---

Related Issues ↓

• Dignity & Capacity of the Poor
• Entrepreneurship
• Made in the Image of God

---