Women Help Needed
As the world focused on felicitating women this month, I was occupied with deciding whether women helped other women. Are we, who were being praised and applauded, really supporters and promoters or adversaries and opponents of one another? I recalled a speech of Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of Pepsico, where she opines that women do not really help one another in the work place because they do not know how to give or receive negative feedback.
Men usually are open to constructive criticisms from other men, and give or receive honest input to help one another. Women construe that other women are out to get them, and thus do not understand how to be there for each other. Men, thus, improve and enhance performance, while women reject the very means available for them to cultivate themselves.
Her pertinent question that begs an answer is: Why do women not consider and support each other, but look with suspicion on their sisters as adversaries and opponents!
Indra points out that, while women are open to input and correction from men, they are not from those of their own kind. She wished she had had the help of savvy women when she started out in career, since she had to resort to men in her work life.
Women Issues Faced
I resonate with her in this, since, when I started out in ministry I also didn’t really have anyone to be there for me or with me. Only men were there to mentor or guide me, which was better than not having any help at all. Yet, they could not be of any assistance with many things that I faced as a woman. Being part of a society where women may be revered as gods but not really honored as equal to men, I faced the ignominy of not being accepted on par with my fellow men ministers. I struggled through the throes of being ignored, my input disregarded, needing to fight to gain respect and anchor my place.
I did have the help of some men around me, who faithfully championed my cause, and went out of their way to assist me. Yet, obviously, I couldn’t download on them in order to prevent soul ties, and they may or may not have able to be there for me in my emotional outfalls. It would have been of great comfort to have women with me who could truly sympathize or empathize when I went through the throes of rejection or ignorance.
A telling of my story will help you know why I am today a fierce champion of women and an advocate of their cause. I make it a point to mentor and help other women so that they have me with them in their corner, and not face what I did. It is indeed sad and pathetic that women don’t help one another, but take it on ourselves to oppose or censure others like us!
Women Support Exemplified
There is an account in the Bible, about two women who rose to the heights of glory and greatness just because they were there for each other in a time of great adversity. The book of Ruth, one of the Bible’s smallest books, showcases the story of Naomi and Ruth, older woman and a younger one, a mother-in-law daughter-in-law, a Hebrew and a foreigner combination. Naomi moves to another country with her husband and two sons because of a famine, sets up home there, and sees her family expand through marriages to good local women.
Disaster strikes her in the new place now, and she ends up losing her men in that place, and being left with her two young daughters-in-law. Alone, and empty in an alien land, she decides to return home when she hears that her nation has again been blessed and restored. When the two girls want to follow her, she dissuades them from doing so lacking resources to support them, or to ensure a future for them with her.
Unable to convince her, one of them returns to her people, but the other one, Ruth clings to her, declaring the famous words, reminiscent almost of wedding vows, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” Naomi resigns herself to having Ruth with her, and together they travel back to Israel, where they take up abode in poverty, dependent on the gleanings from other people’s fields and their mercy.
Women Assist Rewarded
Ruth looks after her mother-in-law, faithful as a daughter, going to fields to pick up fallen grain and thus getting sustenance for both of them to exist. She happens to alight on the field of kinsman of Naomi, Boaz, and receives extra care from him due to her devotion to Naomi. A few months later, at the harvest end, Naomi counsels and helps Ruth win Boaz, one of her close relatives, as her husband.
Naomi, concerned for Ruth’s future, counsels and helps her find a good home and a provider. Thus, Ruth finds a place of wealth and position in an alien land, courtesy of Naomi.
By extension, Naomi also finds rest, for in seeking a blessing for her daughter-in-law, she herself find provision, protrction and perservation of her life. She, who had turned bitter due to the loss of her own, is now restored to a higher place, becomes pleasant again, as her name indicates. She regains her fortune, so much so her neighbours felicitate her at the birth of a grandson, saying that her daughter-in-law, who loves her, is better to her than seven sons.
Ruth’s union with a kinsman of Naomi, and the son born of that union, makes her of the family of King David. Ruth, though a foreigner to the commonwealth of Israel, through her care of Naomi, now becomes the ancestor in a genealogy which has Jesus Christ, our Savior in it!
Women Power Displayed
From the history of Naomi and Ruth we see and learn that what greatness and glory can come out when women succor and assist one another. If they hadnt been there for one another, life could have gone either which way for one or both of the women.
They were not from the same country, but chose to help each other as women from different castes or classes should do for the betterment of each other. They were not of the same age, and yet, they could be of help to one another, which tells us that age difference doesn’t matter, nor does who takes the lead in doing good for the other.
Again, with regard to relationships, the mother-in-law daughter-in-law angle didn’t make any difference. Neither they allow it to interfere in their care for one to another, for they simply did all the right things possible for each other. Such must be the care that women in the same family need to extend to one another. Irrespective of the place or country they lived in, both women chose to make the effort to be a comfort to the other, bonding together to help sustain life, a trait that every woman must imitate in her attitude toward every other woman, world over.
The outcome and blessing of boosting each other up, caused a progress, not at the cost of one another, but to the enhancement of each other. What a picture of women power, woman potential, and women prospect that can be achieved when women favor and flavor one another!
Women Decision Awaited
The short book of Ruth exemplifies for us how women ought to treat one another, and the positive outcome that will ensue when they do so. More so since this short book in the Bible demonstrates women cooperation and collaboration in the context of a family and of a community.
It is indeed sad and horrifying that most abuse and violence done to many a woman within a home is aided and abetted by another woman. If abuse done to a woman in a home by a man is opposed and combated by other woman or women within the same precincts, marital abuse would cease, once for all.
In the workplace too, if women sought to uphold and promote one another, even sexual exploitation can be dealt with. No one seems to want to stand with or for the one who is hurt, but rather seem to take joy in seeing another fall.
In community programs or gatherings, gossip and maliciousness of women kill and maim relationships and fellowship. It is the poisonous tongue of many a woman that ends up mauling or destroying harmony due to pettiness and petulance.
Above all, in the church, women ought to have each other’s back, making excuses for one another, rather than accusing one another. Instead of promoting one another, and lifting one another up, we tend to compete with one another. Instead of seeking to complement one another, as the daughters of the King, we behave as the spawn of hell, vicious and vindictive.
Women Choose Life
It is paradoxical that those who birth life are the very ones who choose to bring harm it or help end it. Ironically, those who nurture life are the same ones who are opting to destroy it or abetting those who do so. Disastrous that those who ought to put a stop to violence within the home, are the very ones perpetuating it. It is horrifying that those who should take a stand against abuse and protect other women are abetting and investing in it.
As the world takes a day, and pauses to applaud and celebrate women, shouldn’t women take a moment to pledge to help each other?
Shouldn’t women learn to more become supporters and promoters of one another?
Shouldn’t women take efforts to not be adversaries and opponents?
Being blessed and upheld by a few faithful women stalwarts, I wish other women would understand when women step up to help one another. We become a force together, nit to destroy but be who we are meant to be – family, society, and nation builders!
When women band together as one, and boost one another up, and not destroy, the world will indeed be a better place, for you and for me!
*A good follow up article is:
WOMAN, WARRIOR OR WORRIER
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