2. •
"Sensing" need in these circumstances is not as
easy as encountering homelessness on the city
streets. Poor women and poor children are not
always obvious among us, and they do not
necessarily provoke (or want) voyeuristic pity and
a soup-kitchen-style line with handouts. Because
such need may hide from public view in the
domestic corners of low-income households, lowpaying jobs, and "safe" women's shelters, we may
need raw statistics to begin to understand the
extent of this problem.” (100)
3. • Notwithstanding the plight of the
poor (women, children and men)
in Africa what did we learn from
the study of women in Sweden?
4. • “Yet it is clear that women cannot assume that they
enjoy economic equality simply because they live in a
nation in which wealth and power are more available.
In a famous study conducted in Sweden-a country in
which we might expect economic gender equalityinvestigators demonstrated that the publication
record, work profile, and accomplishments of
women who were applying for science fellowships
needed to be an average of two and a half times
better than those of the male applicants before the
(all-male) review committee perceived their
applications as having equal funding merit.
5. • This finding-and it was a very careful study-identifies a power
bias that is especially troubling because it is apparently
unconscious. If, as it seems, such a bias is a "natural" reflection of
the way men view women, how then might those many men who
are truly concerned about gender equities and who hold positions
of power work to create the systems necessary to break the cycle
perpetuating such bias? Given that most women earn less than
most men, such a bias in the everyday marketplace directly
contributes to perpetuating the poverty and deprivation that
handicap women and children. As a logical consequence of such
an imbalance between gender and economics, coupled with single
parenting, related health expenses, and often a low self-image
resulting from years of such pressure, even "ordinary" working
women (and their children) can experience a loss of dignity and
self-respect and spiral down the social ladder into the fragile and
often violent world of poverty, destitution, and homelessness.
(100-101)
7. • Women experience poverty, even shared and extreme poverty,
differently than men. Celine D'Cruz, a founder of Slum Dwellers
International, says, "housing is something that's very important to
women. A man can come to a city and live under a bridge, a sheet,
anywhere. But if a city can't provide for a woman, she's extremely
vulnerable." When it comes to securing housing rights, "Women have
much greater stamina for dealing with the complexities."
• That is, women are more likely than men to persist through the red
tape, shame, and administrative "hoops" of obtaining social assistance
since they also face a much higher risk than men of suffering violence,
victimization, and life-threatening abuse if help fails. Because it is not
safe for women to live alone in many societies, women's poverty may
also be related to a history of abusive relationships, early childbearing,
and fear of reporting abuse. As Southern feminist writer Dorothy
Allison puts it, "Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness,
the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind
sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years
of silence." (101)
8. • “The health risks that these women faced
were often very extreme” (103)
9. • “A much more common and pervasive health risk associated
with women's poverty, however, is obesity. In the United States,
the poorer and less educated a woman is, the more likely she
will be obese. Low education levels are consistently and directly
associated with higher obesity rates among women but not
among men. Obesity increases a woman's risk for diabetes, heart
disease, certain cancers, and other health problems.Yet these are
the very same women who cannot afford to take time off from a
low-paying job to see the doctor, and who often lack health
insurance even i( they could. To retain your health insurance
benefits you either have to keep your job or be able to continue
to pay the premiums. ...”
• Research suggests that poor women tend to be obese not
because they are more often hungry, but because of what is
called "food insecurity." (103)
10. • “Women who face the extremes of poverty and violence
sometimes prefer to remain socially "invisible,"
indistinguishable, and even "normal" to the rest of us, as if
safety in all areas of life requires the same invisibility that
offers protection against private abuses. Women who
"hid" in men's disguise in the early Christian desert knew
this instinctively. Even women who today have the
courage to proactively flee domestic abuse find it
necessary to hide, to act in silence, to lie low, as incognito
as possible.Yet in encountering such women, it is often
obvious, even to those of us who have never faced such
extreme threats, that something is very wrong.” (109)
11. • “ The poor in antiquity, faced with seasonal and often extreme food
insecurity, high energy output in walking and manual labor, and different
food choices, manifested poverty in more obvious ways, such as
malnutrition, compromised living conditions, the risk for slavery and
child mortality, and a shortened lifespan. Shame echoes across cultures,
however, often expressed in self-denigrating observations and laments,
and is found in the ancient world in stories of poor women more
frequently than in stories of poor men. Then as now, shame is closely
linked to sexual vulnerability, with the risk (or actuality) of violence and
abuse. In "the suppressed history of class," writes one author, a key
theme is "how low class status, and especially downward mobility,
produces shame." Indeed, women's shame today is so closely linked to a
lack of self-confidence that the Episcopal church suggests that women
reflect on whether their passive submission and self-denigration may be
sinful. "Certain temptations are typical features of many women's lives,"
wrote Martin Smith in his guide to preparing for confession. "There is
less temptation to disobedience and rebellion, but more of a tendency
to give in to victimization, an unholy exaggeration of turning the other
cheek, self-suppression and taking the blame.” (113)
13. What are the three
paradigms that Holman
explores?
14. the three paradigms:
• sensing the poor,
• sharing the world, and
• embodying the sacred kingdom
15. What do we learn
about “sharing the
world” in this chapter?
16. • “Options and tensions over how best to share the
material gifts and resources of the earth and society are
perpetual challenges to any philanthropic discourse. This
is especially true when the needs of those with whom
we desire to share are aggravated by their suffering
within unjust systems. Such systems tend to destabilize
individual access to the necessary goods and services
that donors and friends hope to empower them to use.
Most of the world's economic systems in both the
richest and poorest nations inevitably contain elements
of injustice in one form or another, and early Christian
texts have much to say about giving, sharing, divesting,
and redistributing-whatever we call that kinetic motion
of material goods that does not fit into an organized
market economy-in such environments” (117-118)
17. a cautious remark...
•
Yet the problems of human need remain ever among us,
perpetually open to the real change that is possible for
individual people, families, and communities in need. The
ideals of material redistribution that affect global justice may
influence the choices made every day by bank presidents,
stock consultants, politicians, coffee traders, and any twoyear-old child faced with another child holding a desired
object. Effective sharing is as complicated and nuanced as
any other human relationship.” (118)
18. should we completely
divest?
• “Euphemia's practice also demonstrates, for example, that she
believed that it was acceptable for Christians to retain
ownership of at least some personal property. She owned her
house and her household goods, and she had or could obtain
the resources needed to rent other houses for the displaced
monks. She might have agreed with Clement of Alexandria,
who around the year 200 pointed out the obvious problems
with living as a Christian for someone who practiced total
divestment. If having "given up the use of wealth, but now being
in difficulties and at the same time yearning after what he
threw away," Clement writes, the foolish self-styled ascetic
"endures a double annoyance, the absence of means of
support and the presence of regret." (123)
19. • “It is one's attitude, not the level of one's goods,
Clement says, that requires a real change.
Possessions and wealth are, rather,
• to be welcomed ... because they have been
prepared by God for the welfare of mankind ....
An instrument, if you use it with artistic skill, is
a thing of art; but if you are lacking in skill, it
reaps the benefits of your unmusical nature,
though not itself responsible. Wealth too is an
instrument of the same kind.You can use it
rightly; it ministers to righteousness. But if one
uses it wrongly, it is found to be a minister of
wrong. For its nature is to minister, not to
rule.” (123)
