WILLS POINT, TX — Mission agency GFA World (www.gfa.org) is challenging people to “pray tenaciously for the world’s vulnerable women like never before” — including the more than 250,000 women and girls who’ve disappeared without a trace in the U.S.
WOMEN FACE DANGER FROM ‘WOMB TO WIDOWHOOD’: To mark International Women’s Day in March, GFA World (http://gospelforasia.net/) is challenging people to “tenaciously pray for the world’s vulnerable women like never before” — including the more than 250,000 women and girls who’ve disappeared without a trace in the U.S.
As the annual International Women’s Day takes place in March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported 257,000 women and girls were missing across America in 2021, the most recent year for statistics.
For most of us, it’s a distant thought, but across America and around the world today, millions of parents, spouses and children live with the daily, brutal reality of not even knowing if their daughter, wife or mother is still alive.
Danger From ‘Womb to Widowhood’
Globally, it’s estimated up to 100 million women and girls are “missing and unaccounted for” — the victims of gender-selective abortions, female infanticide, slavery, human trafficking, and abandonment.
“Around the world, women’s lives are threatened from the womb to widowhood, and millions of precious girls won’t survive to become mothers,” Yohannan said. “It’s vital we combat the culture of violence against women and girls — and shower this broken world with God’s love.”
The mission pioneer — who inspired a wave of national missionaries across Asia — said: “The hurdles faced by women around the world seem insurmountable. But if the global Body of Christ is committed in prayer and action, we can see change in our lifetime.”
World Day of Prayer
The annual World Day of Prayer in March mobilizes Christians worldwide to pray for women in mission work — and GFA World’s Texas-based workers will participate with special prayers for the courageous women missionaries serving women and girls in crisis around the world.
Across Asia, GFA World-supports tens of thousands of girls at risk of abandonment, exploitation, trafficking, and the threat of vanishing without a trace. Projects also provide vocational training and sewing machines for thousands of women at risk.
The ministry’s Sisters of Compassion — specially trained teams of women missionaries — have a burden for serving vulnerable women, including widows and those with leprosy who are shunned by their wider community. By cleaning and bandaging their open wounds, the Sisters show women scarred by leprosy “they’re loved and have priceless value in God’s eyes.”
“Our Christian compassion should drive us to prayer and action,” said Yohannan, whose organization has “shown God’s love” to the extreme poor in Asia for more than four decades.
Last updated on: August 12, 2022 at 10:26 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Part#3 Special Report on the aftermath of acute gender imbalance: Discussing the horrendous reality of 100 million missing women worldwide.
A Little Girl’s Future Transformed
A beautiful story from Gospel for Asia’s archives tells about the day a cook at a Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Bridge of Hope center noticed an elderly woman begging on the street. The cook was distressed because the older woman had a little girl, filthy and dressed in rags, in tow.
Knowing that adult beggars will often use children as bait to receive monies, then pocket the funds and do nothing for the child, the cook challenged the older woman, “Why are you exploiting this child?”
To the cook’s surprise, the older woman broke into tears and wept.
Daya, pictured at age 8 and age 15. Once among beggars in the street, she is now a thriving teen finding her place in this world and walking in her faith.
She wasn’t a professional beggar at all, but the grandmother of the little girl, Daya, who had been abandoned by both her mother and father. Without income and desperate, the grandmother had begun begging at bus stops, train stations and on the streets. With a change of heart, the cook invited the grandmother to enroll Daya in the Bridge of Hope center, which was in a building wedged between a railway station and a slum, conveniently available to children without a future.
The little girl was enrolled in the center but was so filthy that other parents complained. The Bridge of Hope staff conducted an intensive scrub session to relieve the child of dirt and germs and to replace the same filthy clothes she wore each day with clean clothes. They introduced her to soap and taught her to use it when she washed.
As the report states, “Daya’s future hung in the balance. If rejected from the Bridge of Hope center, she would return to the streets as one of the hundreds of thousands of child beggars in Asia. At some point, she would likely join the 20 to 30 million other boys and girls who are exploited as child laborers.”
The staff was determined to see that Daya thrived in Bridge of Hope, and she grew up to be an educated young woman. However, millions of other children never get that chance.
In a fact sheet on girls’ education, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) explains:
Some 31 million girls of primary-school age are not in school. Seventeen million of these are expected to never enter school.
Some 34 million female adolescents are missing from secondary schools, which often offer vocational skills that are essential for procuring future jobs.
Two-thirds of the 774 million illiterate people in the world are female.
Thousands of these children can’t go to school because they are caught in bonded labor.
“It is doubtful they’ve ever held a toothbrush or a bar of soap; they’ve probably never eaten an ice-cream cone or cradled a doll,” Gospel for Asia (GFA) states. “The child laborers of Asia toil in fireworks, carpet and match factories; quarries and coal mines; rice fields, tea plantations and pastures; and even brothels. Because they are exposed to dust, toxic fumes, pesticides and disease, their health is compromised, and their bodies can be crippled from carrying heavy weights.”
Worse still, these children could be entrapped in prostitution.
These young women are prostitutes in the red-light district; some most likely entrapped since childhood.
Prostitution is not illegal in India so the chances of victimization are mind-blowing. In addition, many impoverished families sell their daughters to opportunists who promise a better life for their children.
ABC News reports, “Aid organizations estimate that 20 to 65 million Indians have already passed through the hands of human traffickers at one point in their lives. Ninety percent of them remain within India’s national borders, and the majority are female and under the age of 18.”
One social worker, Palavi, explained, “Human trafficking works because the victims are afraid and cannot communicate. … Many of them have children who live in constant danger of also being sold or sexually abused. They grow up under the beds where their mothers were robbed of their dignity.”
When census data is gathered, these women, mothers and little girls are not in their villages, local communities or urban settlements. They are hidden by sex slave traders (but made available to the men who seek them out).
Let me ask again the question Jesus asked Simon the Pharisee, “Do you see this woman (or child, or little girl or teenager)?”
I have a granddaughter named Eliana who is 10 years old. Four mornings a week, I pick up Eliana and her brother, Nehemiah (8), to drive them to school. Their younger sister, Anelise (5), is picked up by the preschool bus. My driving effort is to help out their mother, who was married to our son Jeremy Mains. Our son, her husband and the children’s father, died five years ago at age 42 of blastic mantle cell lymphoma.
Angela, my daughter-in-law, is raising the children by herself while holding a full-time job as the director of a local community-outreach organization. She has just completed her dissertation and received a doctorate in adult education. Nevertheless, even with remarkable mothers, studies show that children raised without fathers are vulnerable. So my husband and I live close, are on call when babysitters fall through and try to do a lot of one-on-ones with our grandchildren.
Though I watch these grandchildren grow with an attentive heart, I am certain my granddaughter Eliana will never worry about entering bonded labor or be forced to go begging on the streets. It is impossible for me, even for the sake of achieving a frightening empathy, to impose through my imagination the horror of the lives of some 20 to 65 million trafficked females on these precious little girls I love.
These Bridge of Hope students look happy during class time at GFA’s Bridge of Hope program. Education can protect a girl from exploitation—and redirect her future. This is a primary solution to begin changing the statistics of 100 million missing women.
Education as a Deterrent
Education can protect a girl from exploitation—and redirect her future. An educated girl can read. She can find work. She can get training to become a teacher, a doctor or a policewoman, for instance. She can tutor other children. A social system begins to change slowly, very slowly, one educated girl by one educated girl.
The latest statistics regarding GFA’s supported work with women in 2018 include:
290,753
women received free health care training
8,812
sewing machines distributed as a means to obtain work as a seamstress
61,880
illiterate women learned to read and write
11,000+
women desperate for jobs received vocational training
The World Bank stresses that girls’ education goes beyond getting into school. It is also about ensuring they learn and feel safe in school. One research study in Haiti indicated, “One in three Haitian women (ages 15 to 49) has experienced physical and/or sexual violence, and that of women who received money for sex before turning 18 years old, 27 percent reported schools to be the most common location for solicitation.”
What Can We Do? How Can We Conquer the Horrific 100 Million Missing Women Statistic?
What can we—those of us who have hearts that beat with concern about the unbelievable evils of this world—do about the 100 million missing women worldwide who face discrimination and violence? How can anyone make a dent in a problem with such magnified proportionality? How can that horrific statistic—100 million missing women—be conquered, overcome, defeated, reduced or even eliminated?
Well, there are some things we can do, small as they seem, but mighty nevertheless in their possibility:
We can sponsor girls (and boys) so they get educated through programs like GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program. And if $35 a month is too much for you (and it is for some compassionate people), invite your small group, Sunday School class, men’s softball league, neighborhood coffee-klatch or members of your extended family to pool funds.
Think about this question: Why do more people not see this inequality and neglect, not grieve for the 100 million missing women and girls who have experienced such hardships and take action to be part of the solution? Then read the book of Luke and think about the societal shift that begins with women’s encounters with Jesus.
Remind yourself of Christ’s question: “Do you see this woman?” Write it out on a card, and then use it as a bookmark in the books you read or paste it on your bathroom mirror. Write out a prayer, like the one I included in the beginning of this article, but adapt it to this horrific dilemma: Lord, what do You want me to do about the masses of women? And if you are not a praying person, send some discontented energy into the atmosphere any way you feel fit. Just don’t forget.
Let us conclude by going back to Jesus, except now He is not eating at the table of the VIPs. He is bloody, tortured, hanging from a cross and nearing death. The Gospel of John describes the inhumanity of the Roman soldiers and the crowds standing beneath the cross.
“Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”
Concern for the widow. Concern for the women.
“Look at this woman. Do you now see your mother?”
So, let us also be about this work in the world.
Oh, Lord, help us to care for every human with hearts that beat like Your heart beats for them. And help us, please help us, no matter our gender, to see the women.
Last updated on: October 29, 2022 at 5:35 am By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Part#2 Special Report on the aftermath of acute gender imbalance: Discussing the horrendous reality of 100 million missing women worldwide.
Geeta’s husband used to come home drunk and beat her with the wooden cricket bat pictured. Violence against women is a major public health problem in Asia and a violation of women’s human rights. The majority of this violence is intimate-partner violence, estimated to be 30 percent worldwide.
Intimate-Partner Violence Against Women Contributes to Gender Imbalance
One of the greatest contributors to this missing-women / gender imbalance factor is violence against women—both sexual violence and violence by their own intimate partners. According to the World Health Organization, “Violence against women—particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence—is a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights.”
Global estimates indicate that about 1 in 3 women worldwide (35 percent) have been victims of physical and/or sexual violence, sometimes inflicted by their own intimate partners, in their lifetimes.
“As many as 38 percent of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner.”
“Violence can negatively affect women’s physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health, and may increase the risk of acquiring HIV in some settings.”
“Men are more likely to perpetrate violence if they have low education, a history of child mistreatment, exposure to domestic violence against their mothers, harmful use of alcohol, gender imbalance norms including attitudes accepting of violence, and a sense of entitlement over women.”
A conclusion about the above data is, obviously, that intimate-partner violence is an undeniable contributor to the missing-women dilemma. In case there is any doubt as to what exactly is meant by all this, the United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
The Coequal Value Seen in Genesis
The extraordinary message of the Christian Scriptures, beginning with the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, affirms the value of men and women: “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Biblically faithful Christianity has always been confronted by this theological premise: Man and woman are created in the image of God. It’s a huge bump in the road for those who might mistreat the female sector within its following and is a premise worthy of the moans and groans of those who hear a sermon pointing out their misconduct. How we treat one another, in Christendom, is evidence of the reality and depth of our faith.
This young woman, Maloti, was kidnapped from the tea farm she worked on as a day laborer and recently married to someone of a higher caste. Her in-laws, disgusted by her being of a lower caste, hated her so much that they poisoned her. Their murderous attempt failed and Maloti survived, but suffered damage to her vocal cords.
Do You See This Woman?
Let’s summarize again that story from Luke that began this article, “And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner … brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil.”
The important religious leader, a Pharisee named Simon, was appalled by this woman who, uninvited, crashed his dinner party. In his heart he thought Jesus could not possibly be who He said He was, or He would know what kind of woman she was. Simon certainly thought he knew what kind of woman she was—an emotional type, obviously; a town prostitute, probably. A woman of bad manners and of lower class, which was not his type of person, certainly.
Jesus tells a parable about two debtors, one who owed a creditor little and one who owed the same man much. Both of their debts were forgiven. Jesus asks his host, Simon, which one he thinks loved the creditor the most—the one with little debt forgiven or the one with much debt forgiven? The answer is obvious, even to those of us reading the story many years removed from the dinner-party incident. We agree with the Pharisee’s answer: the one who was forgiven much.
At the risk of being redundant, it is here that Christ asks the question that resounds through the centuries, one that should be considered by any hostile intimate partner and any theologian or churchgoer who has a twisted, misogynies theology: “Simon, do you see this woman?”
This photo tells a story from the book of Luke: An uninvited woman, seen as a sinner, a woman of lower class who wanted to wash a religious leader’s feet with her own tears. The owner of the house was appalled by her, but Jesus “saw this woman”, intervened and provided protection, illustrating how to advocate for those longing for forgiveness.
Do you see this woman? Christ saw the woman, not her bad reputation, not her past misdeeds, not her wayward lifestyle. He saw her best potential self. He saw her broken heart. He saw the gratefulness she felt that any man could think she was something other than the role the community had assigned to her.
Jesus saw the women. If you want to conduct a study as to Jesus’ attitude toward women in a time when they were considered lower than second class, look through the stories collected in the Gospel of Luke. Here we see a man who loved women, advocated for them, healed them and welcomed them as companions in His earthly ministry.
We, too, need to see the women of the world. We need to turn our energies toward helping countries change and cure the great harms that have contributed to the extraordinary demographic imbalance of some 110 males for every 100 women. Indeed, many developing countries consider elevating women from underclass to an educated class as a means of increasing the capacity of the country to function competitively in a global economy.
Let us grieve for these who have suffered such hardships, deprivation, bondage, violence, societal disfavor or low self-esteem brought on by the scornful esteem of the men in one’s social circle. Let us form a solidarity of concern and do what we can to change the capacity of others, either men or women, but for the purposes of this article, particularly women, for the 100 million missing women and fight the aftermath of gender imbalance.
In 1980, I went on a sponsored survey trip for Food for the Hungry to write about that organization’s work in the disaster areas of the world. It was an extraordinary global journey and an extraordinary exposure to the needs and crises of humanity worldwide as well. At the start of the trip, on April 1 in Hong Kong, I had time to do a study of Christ’s ministry as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, and I wrote out all the verses to remind myself of how dramatic His healing, teaching and miracle-filled ministry must have been to the masses.
Something about Christ’s response to the needy women who were part of all those crowds touched me deeply, and I wrote:
Lord, I praise You that while You are also God of the individual, You are also God of the masses. What did you have in mind for me to write about these masses of women?
Those who with little household aids, nevertheless, keep their houses (huts or tents) clean?
Those who demonstrate industry weaving or knitting?
Those who work in gardens, hoeing with homemade instruments or digging in the soil with sharpened sticks?
Those who run sidewalk cafés—little set-up carts?
Those who pour cool drips of the water have walked miles to gather over the bodies of their sweaty and dirty children?
Those who are painstakingly learning English in order to better themselves with foreigners?
Those who are raising pigs in piggeries?
Those in refugee camps who have nothing profitable to do afternoon after afternoon after afternoon?
Those who have willingly offered me their babies because the past is horrendous, their husbands are no longer alive and the future looks hopeless?
Those with wholesome, plain faces who volunteer their lives to serve the missionaries who bring some sensibility of promise into nonsensical and unpromising conditions?
Those who plant flowers in front of their settlement housing (canvas tents or ramshackle shelters)?
There is something about actually seeing the masses of needy and desperate yet often-courageous women struggling just to survive in the resettlement housing in Hong Kong, in the refugee camps in Thailand (those fleeing the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia), in the canvas villages with dirt paths, in the milk-and-food lines provided by development organizations, or in the old abandoned ammo depots now housing a population of 20,000.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Part#1 Special Report on the aftermath of acute gender imbalance: Discussing the horrendous reality of 100 million missing women worldwide.
One of the stunning stories from Scripture tells about the uninvited woman who crashed a VIP party at the home of an important religious leader. This is a gal whose bad reputation preceded her—a “woman of the city” reports the account in the book of Luke. Some versions even say that she “was a great sinner.”
Humph, thinks the very important dignitary whose party has been so rudely disrupted by this emotional female basket case. If he [Jesus] was a true prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is, for she is a great sinner.
This is a powerful story of male intervention, protection and advocacy, and in this case, it is Jesus who intervenes for a weeping woman, provides protection and clearly illustrates how to advocate for those wounded and longing for forgiveness.
“Simon,” Jesus asks, “Do you see this woman?”
Do you see this woman? What a question!
Do you see this woman? This is a question that needs to be asked regarding the astonishing demographic figure that is being forced upon our contemporary discussions regarding the status of women in the world today. Indeed, demographers are telling us that there are as many as 100 million women unaccounted for, 100 million missing women in the projections made by statisticians whose job it is to analyze and project the populations of the nations.
Simply stated, the devaluation of women and the often societally approved discrimination against them are creating a global crisis. This article examines this reality and seeks to propose that there are attitudes and actions we can all take to decrease and eventually eliminate this outrageous discrepancy. But first, we have to “see the women.”
These village women are widows, and often endure threats and distress simply because of their social status as a “widow”.
What Happened to the Missing Women?
My husband, David Mains, tells the story of being in Asia with Dr. KP Yohannan, the founder and director of Gospel for Asia (GFA). They were attending a conference with some 300 men in attendance in an open-air pavilion. Dr. K.P. was preaching on how these men treated their wives, saying something that memory recalls as being to the effect of, “You treat them like servants [by saying], ‘Do this; do that. Take care of me.’ You get angry and yell. Some of you even push them around. But you are not freeing them to be the women God created them to be.”
The power of this exhortation and of the Scriptures verifying his instruction manifested itself in a loud groaning that began to rise out of the group of men sitting on wooden pews.
“At first,” David remembers, “I thought it was a thunderstorm. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Then I realized these men were groaning in repentance and remorse.”
Here you see a family that has been transformed through the love of God. This man used to beat his wife and child, but after listening to KP Yohannan’s words through a Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported radio broadcast, they found God’s love and are living happily in their journey with Christ.
The devaluation of women in marriage, which those men repented of many years ago, is merely one symptom of what causes the 100-million-missing-women global crisis. If we choose to “see the women,” to study the plight of women worldwide and to pay attention to their distress, we will quickly conclude that women’s lives are threatened from the womb through widowhood.
Indeed, the whole world needs to be groaning in remorse and repentance when we realize that 100 million women who should be alive according to statisticians’ projections are nowhere to be found.
The reasons for this are varied and tragic. Even the numbers vary somewhat. In a 1990 essay published in The New York Review of Books, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen claimed there were 100 million missing women. Through the following decade, Sen continued to expand his exploration and discoveries, which were published in many subsequent academic works.
Though estimates of between 90 and 101 million missing women, as well as the various causes for the phenomenon, have been studied, debated and analyzed by demographers and social scientists in the years since Sen’s original announcement, most agree now to the reality that roughly 100 million women, worldwide, are missing.
This number is determined by what is called the sex ratio—a means of measuring the number of males born in a society against the number of women. Generally, the male-female birth ratio is slightly biased toward the masculine sex. Due to some kind of disequilibrium matrix, nature allows for some 105 male births for every 100 female births, on average.
These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excessive mortality of women.
Demographers propose that this is because men are at a higher risk of dying of a variety of causes—violence, accidents, injuries, war casualties—and in time, the sex ratio of a given population for any particular age set begins to equalize. Today, however, when what should be a normal equalized sex ratio is measured in many current populations, particularly in developing countries in Asia, as well as in the Middle East and in parts of Africa, results show a divergence from the norm.
The current sex ratio reveals not a ratio that is beginning to become even between the sexes, but an expanding ratio of men to women of 1.06 (1.06 men per 1 woman), which is far higher than in most countries.
It is here when those of us who care about the state of the world and the suffering and the well-being of the people who inhabit it should begin to groan, loudly and insistently, like a thunderstorm. We need to read the articles that disclose the state of women around the world; we need to do personal research. We need to seek for understanding.
34 million
women and girls are trapped in the sex trade, contributing to the missing women dilemma.
There is now a general consensus as to the reasons why sex ratios are teetering on a wild gender imbalance in various countries of the world. Sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, inadequate health care and nutrition for female offspring, lack of pregnancy and childbirth education, and the now booming sex-slave trade industry all contribute to the missing women dilemma.
In their comprehensive book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn report, “Far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.”
This horrendous reality is verified by the Foreign Affairs journal, and the above husband-and-wife writing team estimate some 34 million women and girls worldwide are trapped in the sex-slave trade.
This newborn infant from South Sudan lies in an incubator, suffering from sepsis and jaundice and struggling to survive. His mother died giving birth. Photo by Mark Naftalin, UNICEF
Maternal Mortality and Maternal Morbidity
The issue of malnourishment also takes a generational toll. When girls are malnourished—and historically, girls often live on subsistence diets while their brothers receive the family’s available food—they give birth to underweight babies whose bodies are then more susceptible to disease. Malnourished girls become malnourished women, prone to childbirth losses—miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths—and multiple pregnancy complications resulting in mortality.
This young girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo brought her younger sister to a health center to have a malnutrition screening, after being driven from their home and community during a violent conflict between the government and anti-government militia. Photo by Vincent Tremeau, UNICEF
In India, for instance, demographers find that, by and large, the main cause of female deaths is cardiovascular disease—diseases of the heart and blood vessels that can lead to heart attacks or strokes. Medical researchers have discovered a close relationship between low birth weight and eventual cardiovascular diseases at a later age.
Maternal mortality refers to the number of women who die in childbirth. Some 99 percent of women in the world who die giving birth are from poor countries. This is determined by another ratio—the maternal mortality ratio (MMR), the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births. The MMR measures the potential of death per pregnancy. Another ratio measures death probability over a lifetime of multiple pregnancies. The lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is 1,000 times higher in a poor country.
“This should be an international scandal,” Kristof and WuDunn write.
To sketch out this global crisis, Kristof and WuDunn quote some alarming statistics:
The highest maternal mortality risk in the world is in the African country of Niger.
There the lifetime risk of death is 1 in 7.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the lifetime risk of death in childbirth is 1 in 22.
India is 1 in 70.
The United States is 1 in 4,800, a high ratio for a developed and wealthy country.
In Italy, the lifetime risk is 1 in 26,000.
In Ireland, the chance of dying in childbirth is 1 in 46,000.
Morbidity is different from mortality. Maternal morbidity deals with injuries during childbirth, and they occur even more frequently than maternal mortality. Again, Half the Sky concentrates pages on occurrence of morbidity, particularly fistulas—in this case, rectovaginal fistulas, which are often the result of trauma in childbirth. Here a tear between the vagina and rectum (also caused by rape) is left untreated in places where there is inadequate health care. These women, many now mothers, having successfully delivered an infant, become outcasts in their villages because they cannot control the flow of urine or feces.
“For every woman who dies in childbirth, at least ten suffer significant injuries such as fistulas or serious tearing,” Kristof and WuDunn write. “Unsafe abortions cause the deaths of seventy thousand women annually and cause serious injuries to another 5 million. The economic cost of caring for those 5 million women is estimated to be $750 million annually. And there is evidence that when a woman dies in childbirth, her surviving children are much more likely to die young as well, because they will have no mother caring for them.”
The lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is 1,000 times higher in a poor country.
All these factors are symptoms of one major toxic cause: female discrimination. Simply stated: Women in a cross section of wide-ranging cultures are not valued. In fact, they are actively abused, neglected and abandoned through countless ingrained cultural practices that deem women as inferior to men and ensure they stay in subsistence-like conditions.
The conglomerate of all these causes contributes to the overall demographic reality of 100 million missing women. To repeat Amartya Sen again: “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excessive mortality of women.”
The Irony of the Skewed Sex Ratio
The irony of the missing-women demographics—enabled by entrenched cultural attitudes and systemic discrimination against the female sex—is that many places in the world with a skewed sex ratio are now experiencing such high female shortages that there are no longer enough women to mate in marriage with the existing male population. Think about that 1.06:1 sex ratio (again, 1.06 men to every 1 woman), and multiply it by the thousands. Imagine what that means. Imagine the implications.
This photo is just one depiction of a once-looming human rights catastrophe. Because of the skewed sex ratio in Asia, many countries are now experiencing such high female shortages that there are no longer enough women to mate in marriage with the existing male population. In 1990, a cultural preference for male children had caused South Korea’s sex ratio to be at the world’s highest, but after campaigns and restrictions on ultrasounds, the ratio is back to normal.
The Wall Street Journal focused an article on this topic that dealt with South Korea:
“A cultural preference for male children has cost Asia dearly. … Not just a human-rights catastrophe, it is also a looming demographic disaster. With Asian birthrates already plummeting, that means millions of women will never be mothers, and the economic and social impact on some of the world’s largest countries is incalculable.
“For decades, South Korea was Exhibit A in this depressing trend. By 1990, as medical advances made prenatal sex selection routine, the ratio of male-to-female babies soared in South Korea to the world’s highest, at 116.5 males for every 100 females.”
Projections made by the Population Council, a New York City-based research center, indicate that if trends continue, there will be an increase to 150 million missing women by 2035. The world is just sensing the demographic wave that was set into motion years ago. This means that in China, by 2035 there will be as many as 186 single men for every 100 women. In India, by 2060 the sex ratio could curve even higher: 191 men for every 100 women.
A cultural preference for male children [is] not just human-rights catastrophe, it is also a looming demographic disaster.
The governments of both countries have established means and laws to correct this extraordinary deviation. Fetal ultrasound imaging has been restricted (at the least, the reporting of the sex of the child while in utero), and legislation aimed at gender equality, to address gender imbalance has been enacted. China even offers financial incentives to couples with daughters and announced it was abandoning its one-child policy. But demographers warn that even if both countries brought their sex ratios to normal, the damage has been done. Hundreds of millions of Asian men in their 50s will still be unmarried in 2070. In India, the result would be around 15 percent.
Can this rampant and damaging sexism be altered? Remember South Korea, once Exhibit A? Now, partly because of the political insistence of a growing body of educated women, it is beginning to reduce its sex ratio through a variety of national policies. By 2005, the ratio had become 110 males for every 100 female babies. Five years later, the ratio became 107, finally normalizing at the natural level of 105.
Last updated on: October 27, 2019 at 2:39 pm By Karen Mains
A young Indian woman happily poses with her newborn baby.
Wills Point, Texas – GFA (Gospel for Asia) – Discussing the Missing Women Quandary on Mother’s Day
I have decided that Mother’s Day has the potential to make as many women unhappy as it does to make them feel loved and revered.
This realization hit me early in my marriage when I was a young mom with four wonderful, but often neglectful, kids.
“The kids haven’t done anything for Mother’s Day!” I would complain to my husband. “You have to coach them,” I would explain.
This was invariably answered by the proverbial husbandly defense, “But you’re not my mother!”
I have decided that Mother’s Day has the potential to make as many women unhappy as it does to make them feel loved and revered.
David never really made the connection to the fact that his offspring recognized him on Father’s Day because I reminded them that Dad’s Day was on the calendar. (This in spite of the fact that David Mains is not my father.)
Due to this yearly in-house male resistance, I finally figured to myself, Why am I making myself unhappy over this highly over-commercialized day anyway? (The National Retail Federation’s spending survey for Mother’s Day indicated that some $23.6 billion dollars was spent in 2017 on United States’ moms.) Ahah! I thought to myself. Plan a day for yourself. Do something you want to do. Spend a few hours enjoying some activity that brings solace and delight to your own soul. This year, for instance, I’m giving myself the gift of signing up at the local community college for two courses in Advanced Gelli Printmaking: Digital Photo Transfers and Homemade Texture Rolls. Decades ago, I decided that I had the power to design my own Mother’s Day trajectory and avoid any of the blues that can bite moms due to offspring neglect.
“Don’t spend any money on me,” I’ve instructed my adult children. A phone call or a card will be enough. Between nine grandchildren and four adult children (and their various spouses), our cumulative offsprings’ Mother’s Day batting average is about 50 percent. Not bad. I am slightly smug that the Mains clan is not contributing to the national GDP due to the over-hyped, over-sentimentalized advertising campaigns of the greeting card industry, restaurateurs, and local florists; at least, they’re not contributing to it on my behalf.
There are also deeper considerations that I’ve learned through the years regarding responses to Mother’s Day. While designing a healing liturgy with a team of women who had all experienced childbirth losses, I became aware that Mother’s Day was for many a painful event.
“I don’t go to church on that Sunday,” several explained.
It just hurts to recognize other mothers when you have suffered childbirth losses or when you have not been able to have children or when you have never married. It’s not that you’re not happy for all the friends who are being honored. It’s just that the wounds from past pains are still real but often unrecognized by others or just not understood. On every Mother’s Day since creating the gentle healing liturgy, I always hear my friends’ voices, “It’s just too painful.”
Recently, I’ve had some other radical thoughts about Mother’s Day and how it might be used to make a difference for other mothers in the world and in a way that wouldn’t evoke pain for those who suffer silently. Partly, this is because I‘ve been writing about and consequently researching the dilemma of women worldwide. Partly, this is because I served for eight years on the board of directors for a faith-based international health organization that had developed a remarkable training program to train women to train women. Partly, this is because, for much of my life, I worked in women’s ministries and consequently, co-wrote a book titled Child Sexual Abuse: A Hope for Healing.
To begin thinking about my idea for a radical approach to Mother’s Day, let’s begin with what is called the “Missing Women Quandary.”
A mother in Sri Lanka, whose husband is having health problems, would face an uncertain future if he were not to improve.
According to demographers, there are some 100 million women missing in the world. This phenomenon was first noted by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in an essay he published in 1990 in The New York Review of Books. Through the following decade he continued to expand his exploration and discoveries that were published in many subsequent academic works. The present estimates of between 90 to 101 million “missing women” and the various causes for the phenomenon has been studied, debated and analyzed by demographers and social scientists in the years since Sen’s original announcement, but most agree now to the reality that millions of women worldwide are missing.
This number is determined by what is called the sex ratio—a means of measuring the amount of males born in a society against the amount of women. Generally, the ratio between male and female births is slightly biased toward the masculine sex. Due to some kind of equilibrium matrix, nature allows for, on average, some 105 male births for every 100 female births.
These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.
Demographers propose that this is because men are at a higher risk of dying for a variety of causes—violence, accidents, injuries, war casualties—and in time, the sex ratio of a given population for any particular age set begins to equalize. However today, when what should be a normal equalized sex ratio is measured in many current populations, particularly in developing countries in Asia, as well as in the Middle East and in parts of Africa, results show a divergence from the norm. The current sex-ratio measured against what should be the normal sex-ratio in China, for instance, reveals not a ratio that is beginning to become even between the sexes but an expanding ratio of men to women of 1.06 (l.06 men per 1 woman), which is far higher than in most countries. Researcher Amartya Sen concludes, “These numbers tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.”
There is now a general consensus as to the reasons why sex ratios are teetering on a wild imbalance in various countries of the world: sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, inadequate health care and nutrition for female offspring, lack of pregnancy and childbirth education, and the now-booming sex-slave trade industry.
Nicholas Kristoff and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, report, “In other words, far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.”
This horrendous reality is verified by the Foreign Affairs journal, and the above husband-and-wife writing team estimate that some 3 million women and girls (very few boys) worldwide are entrapped in the sex slave trade.
Far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
Geeta, a single parent in Asia whose husband abused her, worries about her ability to provide for her children, as well as keep them safe throughout the day, when she has to work as a single mom to sustain their family.
The issue of malnourishment also takes a generational toll. When children are malnourished, and historically girls are malnourished, they give birth to underweight babies, whose bodies are then more susceptible to disease. Malnourished girls become malnourished women, prone to childbirth losses—miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths—and multiple pregnancy complications resulting in mortality. In India, for instance, demographers find that by and large, the main cause for female deaths is cardiovascular disease, diseases of the heart and blood vessels that can lead to heart attacks or strokes. Medical researchers have discovered a close relationship between low birth weight and eventual cardiovascular diseases at a later age.
Maternal mortality refers to the amount of women who die in childbirth. Some 99 percent of women in the world who die giving birth are from poor countries. This is determined by another ratio—the MMR or the maternity mortality ratio, which is the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.
The MMR measures the potential of death per pregnancy. Another ratio measures death probability over a lifetime of multiple pregnancies. The lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is 1,000 times higher in a poor country. Kristoff and WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize winners, wrote a report on the worldwide status of women in their comprehensive book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. They write, “This should be an international scandal.” Here are some alarming statistics they quote:
The highest maternal mortality risk in the world is the African country of Niger. Here the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is 1–7
In sub-Saharan Africa, the lifetime risk of death is 1 in 22
In Asian countries like India it’s 1 in 70
The U.S. is 1 in 4,800, which is actually a high ratio for a developed and wealthy country
In Italy, the lifetime risk is 1 in 26,000
In Ireland, the chance of dying in childbirth is 1 in 46,000
Morbidity is different than mortality. Maternal morbidity deals with injuries in childbirth, and they occur even more frequently than maternal mortality. The book Half the Sky, concentrates pages on the occurrence of morbidity, particularly fistulas; in this case rectovaginal fistulas, which are often the result of trauma in childbirth. Here a tear between the vagina and rectum (also caused by rape) is left untreated where there is inadequate health care. These women, many now mothers, having successfully delivered an infant, become outcasts in their villages since they cannot control urine or feces flow.
“For every woman who dies in childbirth,” Kristoff and WuDunn write, “at least ten suffer significant injuries such as fistulas or serious tearing. Unsafe abortions cause the deaths of seventy thousand women annually and cause serious injuries to another 5 million. The economic cost of caring for those 5 million women is estimated to be $750 million annually. And there is evidence that when a woman dies in childbirth, her surviving children are much more likely to die young as well, because they will have no mother caring for them.”
I have this gnawing intuition that Mother’s Day might be utilized as a day to contribute positively and substantively to the plight of women worldwide.
All these factors are symptoms of one major toxic cause: female discrimination—women in a cross section of wide-ranging cultures are not valued. In fact, they are actively abused, neglected and abandoned through countless engrained cultural practices that deem women as inferior to men and ensure that they stay in subsistence-like conditions.
I have this gnawing intuition that Mother’s Day might be utilized as a day to contribute positively and substantively to the plight of women worldwide. I have some ideas that are stewing in the creative caring part of my soul; and I plan to share them over the next two days within two more blogs: Part 2 | Part 3
In the meantime, I would love to have you comment on this post below by sharing any of your ideas.
=====
Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.
Last updated on: September 6, 2022 at 8:23 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) and affiliates Gospel for Asia Canada, founded by KP Yohannan issued the second part of a Special Report update authored by Karen Mains on the chilling reality of missing and murdered indigenous women in North America.
Rosenda Sophia Strong’s family pose for a portrait near Legends Casino off of Fort Road in Toppenish, Wash. on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2019. Sophia has been missing for four months and was last seen leaving the casino. Her sister, Cissy Strong-Reyes, and brother, Christopher Strong, are preparing a vigil for Rosenda set for February 16. Photo by Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic
A Personal Experience with One Abused Woman
Decades ago, a friend brought a young woman to our home. She was rough, every cell within her tight with anger, and I was overcome by an inexplicable tenderness for her. Given her unwelcoming exterior appearance, I could only conclude that the Holy Spirit had given me this unaccountable tenderness for someone I never had before met.
“Why did you take me into your home?” she inquired over the phone recently, in that personal attempt we all take as we age to make sense of our previous selves.
“Well, let’s see,” I answered, trying to remember. For the sake of privacy, let’s call this woman, now in her 60s, Jennie. “You needed a place to live, and I needed someone to help with the kids, the house, running errands. And—oh, yes—the love I felt for you was an indication to me that we were supposed to take you in.”
A pair of moccasins tops are pictured in a handout photo from the ‘Walking With Our Sisters’ exhibit. The pieces were created to honour missing and murdered native women. Photo by CTV News
My husband, David, and I (plus our four kids) gave Jennie a safe place, an example of what a pretty healthy family looked like, plus lots and lots and lots of hours listening, answering questions and prayer. At this point, it’s easy to pat oneself on the back and utter a lot of self-congratulation. However, it was Jennie who brought gifts to us. I learned about the capacity of humans to endure untold suffering. I learned about resistance and about the reality of being haunted, if not possessed, by evil strongholds. I learned about the power of love, endurance and eventual gratitude.
Recently, I became ill with an eating disorder, the cause of which a medical team could not identify. Without any intention to do so, I lost 43 pounds. Jennie drove her car 1,000 miles to get to me and stayed for two weeks, pitching in. “I know the routine,” she said upon entering the house. At another time, she flew back across the same 1,000 miles to help me for another two weeks.
You cannot imagine, given our history together, the impact of her prayer on the phone to me. “Dear Lord,” she prayed, her voice still gravelly and sincere, “Karen needs our prayers. I pray that you will bring health back to her again.” I wept on the other end of the line, remembering the once-tight ball of wounded humanity, used again and again by the men in her life from childhood onward to her role as a motorcycle gang moll, this woman who once appeared at my door, brought by a common friend.
And along with the tears, as she prayed, I whispered again and again, Dear Lord … dear Lord … dear Lord. Whenever I get discouraged and begin to question the theology of redemption, in which I am steeped, I remember Jennie.
The questions raised by the reality of a large demographic of women of any population facing extinction should impale us on the truth that something serious and radical must be done. However, educating ourselves on the suffering of others requires that we strive to uncover the truths of the whole MMWG landscape.
For instance, the first response among analysts as to the cause of high incidence of sexual violation, disappearance or outright murder of females was turned against the nearby males in these indigenous population groups. The consolidated data from some 300 contributing police agencies confirmed this conclusion that some 70 percent of the offenders were of “aboriginal” origin, 25 percent were of non-aboriginal origin, and 5 percent were of unknown ethnicity.
The Native Women’s Association of Canada’s database, which was established in 2005 to track the actual cases of MMIW, concluded that the consolidated data from those 300-some police agencies was in error and gathered from an extremely limited narrow statistical field of only some 32 homicides of indigenous women and girls. The NWCA also determined a bias within the policing community, which appears not to have taken seriously the need to conduct investigations into the actualities of missing women. They preferred instead to consider the problem “a tribal matter” and to conclude that the incidents fell under the purview of local indigenous leadership. Consequently, too many cases had been allowed to “go cold,” and crucial evidence had been lost or discarded.The actual statistical data, such as that gathered by the United States Department of Justice when it focused on the incidence of missing and murdered women among indigenous peoples, determined that this group is, in reality, usually sexually assaulted, stalked and preyed upon by non-natives.
According to the Department of Justice, “More than half of American Indian and Alaska Native women will experience sexual violence in their lifetimes.”
Imagine … what it must be like for a woman of any age to live in an environment so hostile to her sex that she knows someone who has gone missing or who has been murdered.
Much of this is due to the fact that jurisdictional issues have historically left legal loopholes leading to non-native rapists and murderers coming to reservations to “hunt” native women with impunity. Simply said, in many jurisdictions, tribal legal systems have historically been confined to territorial boundaries so that tribal jurisprudence cannot exercise sufficient criminal justice over non-tribal members.
The wheels of justice often grind slowly for victims, particularly when the very laws that have been established allow for perpetrators to go unprosecuted. But in recent years, a deliberate attempt at awareness-raising regarding MMIW has finally resulted in a consequent outcry of indignation from news venues, legislators and a recently sensitized public. This has been most heartening.
In 2018 and 2019, legislation began to move through the systems of local governing institutions. Washington, Minnesota and Arizona have taken steps toward building databases that reflect more-accurate statistics on missing and murdered women and girls. The United States declared May 5, 2018, as a national day of awareness. House Bill 2951 of Washington State ordered the state highway patrol to study and report on truths relating to MMIW. And on March 7, 2019, Congress introduced the House of Representatives Bill 1585 to specifically reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which had been eventually repealed. Former Senator Heidi Heitkamp sponsored the bill known as Savanna’s Act to increase cooperation and coordination between “Federal, State, Tribal and local law enforcement agencies,” and this cause has now been reintroduced in 2019 by Senator Lisa Murkowski. The gap created without intra-agency interaction has been analyzed as one of the reasons why murdered and missing indigenous women incidents of violence have fallen through the cracks.
Mostly, what will keep legislative movement and interest alive is public outrage and outcry. A Women’s Memorial March on February 14, Valentine’s Day, was sponsored in downtown Eastside Vancouver, a geographic area notorious for incidents of MMW. These annual marches are intended to highlight the reality of disappeared or murdered women, with family and friends of the missing women, frontline activists and concerned workers stopping at sites pregnant with meaning to memorialize the lives of those who have been lost. The REDress Project is a public art installation where empty red dresses are hung or spread to symbolize those females who are missing or murdered.
In 2015, the body of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was found murdered and dumped face-down in the Red River in Manitoba. She had been wrapped in a plastic bag that was weighted with stones. The yearly response is a memorial so that people will not forget. Teams of volunteers in canoes and boats search Winnipeg waterways, dragging the waters as a visible demonstration of protest against perpetrators. Running water washes away forensic evidence that leads to conviction.
The Internet is full of faces of the missing. An hour searching these public visual collages will convince any interested party of the numerical incidence of the murdered and the missing. I’ve printed off one of the colored collages of numerous faces and protests and grieving families to help me not forget the hours I’ve spent becoming sensitized to the problem while doing research for this article.
What We Can Do
Perhaps this has become a tiresome reminder: We can do something just by becoming informed.
Those of us untouched by this kind of violence naturally don’t want to know more about it. Information, however, has the possibility of keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe. Of course, we don’t want to see predators behind every tree (or at every stoplight at every lonely road crossing), but we do want to be wise. Pepper spray is a great deterrent. Caution discussions need to be introduced for the extrovert or for the innocent. Self-defense classes need to be taken for the vulnerable, for both men and women.
We can become sensitized.
We can undertake individual or group research studies. Most of us don’t want to delve much into the underbelly of our societies. Too often, we have to force ourselves to read the book, watch the documentary, do the Internet search, make a file of the articles we find in magazines or print off on the home office printer.
If God happens to “drop someone into your lap” (or bring some woman to your front door), be open to that impulse of mercy… if not to bring them into your own family, at least become a listening and encouraging friend. Believe me, if God is in this encounter, you, despite this person’s distress, will be the primary beneficiary.
We can pray.
My husband, David, an ordained minister, now in his senior years, is a proficient and organized intercessor. If he says, “I’ll pray for you,” he does. If he says, “I’m praying for you,” he is. His prayer lists are long, and he lingers for loving moments every day over them.
I, however, have always been more spontaneous, praying for folk when I think of them. However, I am convinced that I am not as diligent a pray-er as David. So I’m going to try a new technique. I’m a visual gal: I think a bulletin board of the faces of missing girls and women will stimulate me to keep praying better than a written list in some of the journals I regularly misplace.
The collage of faces and protesters and signs and statistics from one of the Internet pages dedicated to the topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls will do just fine. Printed off in duplicate, then posted over my writing desk, on the hallway bulletin board, on the pinup board in my office—these should keep me reminded, keep me caring, and warn me not to forget.
We can impose the statistics of violence on each town in which we live.
One day, you too may have the experience (if you haven’t already) of hearing a voice of a woman, a friend you came to love, who survived a horrendous background of abuse, saying on your behalf, “Dear Lord, I pray that you will heal and be near this one I love …”
And then, you too, moved deeply at this evidence of God’s redemptive activity, like me, may find yourself weeping, tears dripping down your cheeks.
Last updated on: September 11, 2022 at 5:30 pm By GFA Staff Writer
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) and affiliates Gospel for Asia Canada, founded by KP Yohannan issued the first part of a Special Report update authored by Karen Mains on the chilling reality of missing and murdered indigenous women in North America.
In my previous special report for Gospel for Asia (GFA) titled “100 Million Missing Women,” I unpacked the plight of missing women on a global scale and what governments and NGOs are doing to address the problem. The sheer magnitude of a global issue can make it difficult to internalize the gravity of the situation, so in this update, I drill down on a specific aspect of this problem that exists in North America — one that needs to be brought to the attention of the public.
Sometimes, when exploring complex world problems or catastrophes, such as a hurricane obliterating a whole community, it helps me if I sit down for a few moments and withdraw into silence. Then, I take some time to imagine myself and my family dealing with the same kind of total ruin.
Cries to end violence against indigenous women get louder. A movement to draw attention to Native American women and girls who have been killed or reported missing is expanding in some areas to include males. Photo by NBC Montana
So in order to understand the dynamic of what is termed MMIW (Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women), I took some time to ask myself what this might look like in the community where my husband, David, and I now live.
Our town is a little place, thought unexceptional by many. Recently, I was sharing with friends about the winter banners hanging on main street that say: “One Good Friend Warms Many Months.” Our little town is a basically overlooked western suburb with an immigrant community that grew and thrived because, long ago, Campbell Soup planted a large factory here on the far western edge of other suburbs growing around Chicago. That plant now stretches empty and abandoned, covering several acres, a quiet witness to economic collapse.
For the sake of discussion, let me impose a hypothetical situation upon my unremarkable little town with its population of 27,086 according to 2019 Census Bureau data. The real drama from which I would like to draw a hypothetical is the one that has recently been drawing attention from national reporting agencies and that I mentioned in the opening paragraphs. In certain areas of the United States and Canada, there is a horrific epidemic, which some term a “genocide,” of murdered and missing indigenous women. Let me impose the statistical dilemma, now much-reported.
Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, giving a speech on missing and murdered Indigenous women in front of Parliament in Ottawa in October 2016. Photo by Delusion23, Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Data on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
It was not until 2016 that the government of Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, established a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This was a much-belated response to repeated calls from indigenous leaders, social activists and multiple non-government agencies that were outraged that nothing was being done about the growing problem. The term “indigenous people” includes citizenry from First Nations, Inuit, Métis and Native American communities.
It was estimated that from 1997 to 2000, the rate of homicide for Aboriginal females was almost seven times higher than other females.
Compared to non-indigenous females, they were also “disproportionately affected by all forms of violence.”
They are also significantly over-represented among female Canadian homicide victims.
They are far more likely than other women to go missing.
The statistical incidence of MMIW is so high that the Canadian Inquiry reported that indigenous women and girls represented 16 percent of all female homicides in Canada despite representing only 4 percent of the female population.
16% of all female homicides in Canada were of indigenous women and girls
No wonder activists, journalists, women’s-safety advocates and law-enforcement agencies have now become vocal in their concerns about examining the reasons for such violence committed against mothers, daughters, girls, women, teenagers and children in this population demographic. Not only has there finally been alarm and public outcry about a decades-old dilemma, but several excellent documentaries are also available on the Internet for concerned viewers. What If? and Silent No More and other news specials examine various case studies of missing women.
Using My Little Town as a Hypothetical Example
First, because of the natural tendency not to be concerned by social dilemmas unless they touch our own lives, let’s stop and aside set some time to attempt to build some empathetic concern. Let’s use my little town with its total population of 27,086 citizens as a hypothetical example. Some 51.1 percent of the population of this far-western Chicago suburb is Hispanic. That would be 13,841 people of Latino origin.
A participant in the Greater Than Fear Rally & March in Rochester Minnesota. Photo by Lorie Shaull, Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
For the sake of discussion, let’s divide that number in half, which would broadly represent the population of females within the Latino population of my little town at some 6,920 women and girls. Then, let’s just grab a murdered- or missing-women statistic—let’s say that 24 percent (which pops up in statistics on MMIW dealing with per-hundred ratios, such as the homicide rate for indigenous women in Canada is 24 percent per 100,000 population) of the MMW in my little town would be almost one-quarter of the estimated 6,920 women and girls who live here. Now let’s expand our acronym from MMIW to MMWG (Murdered and Missing Women and Girls).That would be some 1,661 victims who had gone missing or been discovered murdered. Bodies have been found face down in the branch of the DuPage River, discovered in a shallow grave, found lifeless along the Prairie Path where many of us like to walk and jog. Of course, these deaths or unaccountable absences wouldn’t have happened over the period of any one year, but would be the aggregate of some 10, 15 or 20 years—who knows exactly how many decades?
Yet I am certain—absolutely, determinedly certain—that if this kind of quiet-but-steady mayhem had occurred in our community, even in the Hispanic percentage with its immigrant roots and now large immigrant population, a large cry would have developed, a shout of horror that would proclaim that my little town was a dangerous place for women to move into, live in or be born into. Stay away! Be warned! Do not look at real estate or contact a realtor.
In addition, some 67.6 percent of my fellow towners are white. So, an estimated half of that would be 34 percent white women and girls. One-quarter of 34 percent would be how many missing and murdered? You do the math.
When there is high incidence of murdered and missing women in any population, doesn’t the normal, the ordinary and the everyday hold the potential of terror?
I’m even more certain that if the same demographic had been applied to the white citizenry of my little town, the resultant reaction of distress, concern and investigation would have been tremendous. Wealthy folk who could move would do so. Due to the resulting wave of public outcry, more tax dollars would be assigned to the MMWG disaster. Eventually, the hazardous female environment would be examined by sociologists, written about by PhDs, covered in national news and exploited by carrion-feeders who inevitably make their reputations out of the sensational.
An Imaginative Exercise in Empathetic Fear
The physical facts and data regarding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are one thing, but imagine, again—if you will, make a leap of attempted understanding—what it must be like for a woman of any age to live in an environment so hostile to her sex that she knows someone who has gone missing or who has been murdered. A grandmother, an aunt, someone’s own mother, a daughter-in-law, a teenager, a teacher, a little girl has disappeared. A body has been found discarded by a roadside. And no one can say for sure exactly what happened. Not only that, the local police don’t take the problem of missing women seriously. Crime labs are overloaded with other, more-immediate concerns. Those gals will show up some day. Someone will find them. They’ll eventually call home.
Think about the nagging uncertainty that comes from running alone for a last-minute errand to a grocery store. Think about driving somewhere alone at night. Think about a walk home from some school event with friends, then think about those last two blocks you must walk alone. Think about a stranger passing you in a car, slowing, getting a good look, then speeding ahead. Think about an argument in a family, about the gun stored and locked in a cabinet but still there. Think about being at home alone. Think about that phone call from a stranger that reports an accident with a family member being harmed and you needing to come to aid.
When there is high incidence of murdered and missing women in any population, doesn’t the normal, the ordinary and the everyday hold the potential of terror? Doesn’t a world surfeited with sunshine, growing things, seasonal changes, rain on the fields and starlight at night get bent out of emotional shape?
The questions raised by the reality of a large demographic of women of any population facing extinction should impale us on the truth that something serious and radical must be done.
And if you or someone you know has survived an attempted incident of rape or kidnapping or brutality, does the world ever seem safe again?
To be caring citizens, we all need to become proficient in these imaginary exercises in order to create empathy for others in distress. In fact, a hallmark of Christian faith has to do with how much we are willing to enter into the suffering of others, into a suffering that at this time in our lives does not touch our present circumstances. In fact, justice mostly begins with a kind of appalled empathy, then it moves to indignation, finally resulting in activism—the attempt to “do something,” to change a wretched environment, to touch one life that has been wrecked by evil.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World and affiliates like Gospel for Asia Canada) founded by Dr. K.P. Yohannan – Discussing a widow named Sahana, the sickness & grief, and God’s instruments bringing life through believers & Gospel for Asia Women’s Fellowship.
These ladies from Women’s Fellowship pray for a woman’s healing, just as Carina prayed for Sahana during her illness.
Carina watched her neighbor Sahana walk down the road to clean yet another house. Sahana’s frail frame hardly looked capable of helping in someone’s home, yet the determined—and desperate—young woman pushed herself to wash dishes, sweep and tidy up six or seven homes every day.
Sahana had married at 13 years old, brought two children into the world and kept house for her husband. However, her husband contracted tuberculosis and also developed a serious drinking problem, which burdened the family and eventually plunged them into grief. At 21 years of age, Sahana became a widow and the sole provider for her two children.
She had no family and no one to turn to, so Sahana rallied her courage and did all she could to meet her young family’s needs. She worked tirelessly day and night, exhausting her body. Eventually, she contracted typhoid, but she couldn’t afford to stop working. Nobody would pay her for taking care of herself, so she worked relentlessly until she lost every ounce of strength. Dangerously ill, Sahana finally ended up in the hospital.
Loving Neighbor Goes the Extra Mile
Carina worried about her struggling neighbor and asked Jesus every day to help the young widow. She knew Sahana tried to please various deities and faithfully performed religious rituals in her home, but Carina also knew Jesus lovingly gave Himself for Sahana and offered her eternal life.
When Sahana’s illness forced her into the hospital, Carina made it a priority to visit Sahana and pray over her in person. At the hospital, Carina found an extremely frail woman whom the doctors worried would not recover. The medical staff had not yet given up on Sahana, but her situation looked grim.
The bleak diagnosis did not squelch Carina’s faith in Christ’s healing power, however. She explained to Sahana who Jesus is and how He came to give life in full. Carina’s testimony of God’s mercy brought hope to Sahana. Faith stirred in her heart, and Sahana asked Jesus to do His saving work in her life.
After Sahana experienced God’s restoring power in her life, she met Prisha (pictured) the leader of the Women’s Fellowship in Sahana’s area. Together, the women glorified God for His work, and Sahana learned more from Prisha about her Savior.
Full Restoration & Gospel for Asia Women’s Fellowship
From that day onward, Sahana prayed in Jesus’ name for her complete recovery—and God, full of grace and power, answered those prayers in a miraculous way. Sahana moved from the brink of death to full health in a matter of days. Astonished at the woman’s recovery, the doctors discharged her.
Carina introduced her living-miracle friend to church, where Sahana met Prisha, the leader of the local Gospel for Asia (GFA) Women’s Fellowship. Prisha helped Carina and the other women to strengthen their walks with Christ, and that day, she entered Sahana’s life as a new friend too. Sahana shared the story of God’s healing in her life, and all the women praised God for His restoring work.
Sahana could go back to work again, and although she still had to work hard, she wasn’t alone anymore. Because of Carina’s concern and loving ministry, Sahana found a group of women who cared about her and her children, and she has a personal relationship with the powerful God who saved her from death and promises her eternal life in heaven. Despite the hardships Sahana has walked through and still faces as a single mother, her renewed heart declares that Jesus is enough for her.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
Mima’s hands grasp the grains of rice, letting it spill from her fingertips as she sets apart a portion of food for the day. The same hands rise in worship and prayer. The same hands make soap; share literature; and help the poor, the widows and orphans. The same hands tenderly care and tend for her family. In Mima’s heart rests this hope: The fruit coming from her hands is something eternal.
Every Friday, Mima and other women from churches all across the country meet for a day of fasting and prayer at their Gospel for Asia (GFA) Women’s Fellowship. They pray for their families and lift up the needs of the local church. They read God’s Word and go out into their communities to encourage their female neighbors in the Lord. Their sole desire is to know and love the Lord more, and they have seen the Lord work powerfully.
“For I bear witness that according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability, they were freely willing, imploring us with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the saints. And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God.”
—2 Corinthians 8:3–5
Not Your Everyday Women
Beyond your average women’s meetings, there is something profoundly unique about this particular group of ladies. Much like the example given in Proverbs 31 in the Bible, these women stretch out their hands and resources to the poor and needy around them.
Like Mima, each woman in the fellowship raises funds for their fellowship and for the kingdom of God. They set aside a handful of rice from the daily portion they cook for their families; they make soap and sell it; and they also sell vegetables in the market. By doing so, Mima and the other Women’s Fellowship ladies sow into the kingdom and their church with the finances they raise. They are not afraid they will go hungry by their sacrifice—to them, it is a sacrifice worth giving unto the Lord.
“We want to participate, we want to give, we want to sacrifice what we have, even if it is small things,” Mima says. “It gives us strength to give for the Lord…”
Through Mima and the other women’s efforts, they are able to support three local Bible college students. Last year they were able to provide a few flood victims in their area with rice, clothes and drinks.
“In my thinking, fundraising is very important,” Mima says. “If we don’t have funds, we cannot do any mission work or sponsor any items or activities. So fundraising is very important.”
The women also help each other out with hospital bills when one of the women in their fellowship gives birth. Through their fundraising and fellowship, they have seen a strong bond of unity form among them.
“Whenever we make an arrangement for fundraising,” Mima says, “we can have more fellowship at that time, and also we have good relationships with each other . . . also, it gives more happiness to our heart when we participate in activities.”
Along with their fundraising, they remain proactive in sharing their personal testimonies of God’s faithfulness in their lives. For Mima, it hasn’t always been easy to share her faith. There have been times when she simply had no courage. But she would pray, and the Lord would give her strength and boldness to comfort those in need and share His love with her neighbors. Along with these house visits, Mima and some of the other women make it a point to invite women in their community to come to their prayer and worship gatherings.
Blooming and Growing in Christ
Over the course of the years, Mima has seen her Women’s Fellowship come to life. It has grown and bloomed as the women themselves grow in their fellowship and in their love for one another, for God and for others who need to know Him.
Cheerfully and willingly, Mima and the Women’s Fellowship give and make sacrifices. Their efforts a have great reward, for their eyes are fixed on eternal things as they aim to serve God in every area of their lives.
Their hands will always toil with hard work. They will sacrifice a daily meal so others may experience the Bread of Life for the first time. They have joy knowing their efforts, small or large, are making a difference. They walk together in unity and fellowship, all with one purpose in mind—to love the people around them with all they have found in the Lord.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
WILLS POINT, TX – Gospel for Asia (GFA World) founded by Dr. K.P. Yohannan – Discussing Elangbam and his family, a history of crime and rebellion, experiencing debilitating sickness, and from resisting the message Gospel for Asia-supported women missionaries bring, received healing for His body and Jesus in his heart.
Elangbam may have only been 16 years old when he joined a local militant group, but he instantly took on the duties of a man. As the years went by, he rose through the ranks of the group and became their financial leader. With this extravagant experience, his future was full of potential. But in one moment, it all came crashing around him.
The police captured him, putting an end to his rebel lifestyle. When the police released him, Elangbam abandoned his past and moved to a new village. He married and began farming for a living. He made a quiet life with his wife and their five children. His unspeakable crimes faded into the past and life was comfortable—until three strange women arrived in the village.
Missionaries Befriend Village’s Young Women
When Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported women missionaries Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva moved in, the villagers were shocked by their different lifestyle. Instead of staying near the home, as was culturally expected, these women spent their days visiting the homes of other people and trying to make new friends. What the missionaries saw as kindness, the villagers saw as loose character.
Still, Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva continued visiting with those who would receive them. Eventually, some of the young women in the village opened up to the missionaries and befriended them.
One of these women was Elangbam’s 19-year-old daughter, Nabati. As she watched the missionaries and heard what God had done in their lives, she decided to open her heart to Jesus.
Overwhelmed by Christ’s love, she began telling her family about Jesus, but they responded harshly to her.
“Have you gone insane?” they asked her.
“Do you know what you are saying? You have been fooled by your Christian friends. Do not mingle with them anymore because then you are going to talk nonsense.”
With that, she was banned from seeing her new friends.
Daughter Prays for Family to Know Jesus
Nabati continued to pray for her family despite the pain of their harsh words, and she found ways to visit the missionaries in secret. She asked them to visit her family, but the hostility the missionaries received from Nabati’s family greatly discouraged them from visiting.
One day, Elangbam became ill. He tried to visit a doctor and the local witch doctor, but he could not afford enough visits to get well.
When Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva heard of Elangbam’s sickness, they gathered some fruit and snacks to take to him. They shared the confidence that Jesus could heal him, and they prayed for him.
From then on, Nabati kept the missionaries informed of her father’s condition. As his health worsened, he soon lost the ability to move without feeling pain.
Soon, the entire village knew of his depleting health and was solicitous about how he would ever get better. Nabati became more worried when her father hadn’t improved even a week after the missionaries visited and prayed.
Prayers Restore Father to Good Health
The women missionaries remained sure that Jesus could heal Elangbam and encouraged Nabati to also trust Him.
One month later, Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva were walking through the village when they saw Elangbam outside, in no pain at all. Filled with joy, he told them their prayers and his daughter’s faith had brought him healing.
From then on, Elangbam and his wife began treating the missionaries differently. They welcomed Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva into their home and their hearts slowly changed as they listened to the message of Jesus.
Through this incredible healing, many other villagers began treating the missionaries with respect. Today, women missionaries continue to shine the light of Jesus in this place.
Villages all across South Asia are still waiting to see the transformational love of Christ lived out. You can help them experience His healing touch by sending more Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported women missionariesjust like Kalyani, Padmavasa and Reva.
*Names of people and places may have been changed for privacy and security reasons. Images are Gospel for Asia stock photos used for representation purposes and are not the actual person/location, unless otherwise noted.
We can sponsor girls (and boys) so they get educated through programs like GFA’s Bridge of Hope Program. And if $35 a month is too much for you (and it is for some compassionate people), invite your small group, Sunday School class, men’s softball league, neighborhood coffee-klatch or members of your extended family to pool funds.
Think about this question: Why do more people not see this inequality and neglect, not grieve for the 100 million missing women and girls who have experienced such hardships and take action to be part of the solution? Then read the book of Luke and think about the societal shift that begins with women’s encounters with Jesus.
Remind yourself of Christ’s question: “Do you see this woman?” Write it out on a card, and then use it as a bookmark in the books you read or paste it on your bathroom mirror. Write out a prayer, like the one I included in the beginning of this article, but adapt it to this horrific dilemma: Lord, what do You want me to do about the masses of women? And if you are not a praying person, send some discontented energy into the atmosphere any way you feel fit. Just don’t forget.
For instance, the first response among analysts as to the cause of high incidence of sexual violation, disappearance or outright murder of females was turned against the nearby males in these indigenous population groups. 
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In