American Woman
How I’ve learned that being one is a precious privilege and an awesome responsibility
The question has stayed with me for nearly three years. It pops up in my consciousness every now and then like a buoy, making me a bit uncomfortable. But I'm learning that’s not such a bad thing.
When I first heard the question, I was in California visiting my friends Sandie and Estera, two women I’d met the year before at an overseas conference for women in Christian publishing. Since my friends were both missions-minded and poised at crossroads in their lives, I knew we’d enjoy stimulating conversation about life, purpose, and direction. I couldn't wait.
During my visit, Sandie gave a presentation at a nearby Christian college about the work she and her husband had done to combat the sex-trafficking industry during their recent ten-year missions stint in Athens, Greece. I sat transfixed as she explained the global phenomenon of women tricked, forced, or sold into prostitution. Staring at pictures of the hollow-eyed women Sandie had helped through her ministry, I wondered what I could do to help combat this evil industry.
The following day, I headed to the offices of Open Doors International to interview one of their directors for a TCW article. This ministry to the persecuted church worldwide had launched a sub-ministry five years earlier to serve the unique needs of women in the persecuted church.
As I listened to the director, Jane, describe female genital mutilation, incest, and denial of jobs, literacy education, or biblical teaching to women in different parts of the world, my heart felt as heavy as it had the day before when I listened to Sandie's presentation.
What struck me most was that one of Sandie's colleagues, a sociology professor, and Jane both posed the same tough question in our separate conversations. "Women in the U.S. today have more power and influence than women have ever experienced before," they said, "and the big question is, ‘What are we doing with it?’"
Hearing this startling question twice in two days, I knew God was up to something, and I prayed for eyes and ears to catch it.
Since then, God has opened my eyes and heart to women’s issues around the world. I read a recent e-mail newsletter from Sisters in Service that reported “34 percent of Egyptian women are assaulted by an intimate partner, and nearly 80 percent of women in rural Egypt testify that beatings are common and justified if a wife burns food, neglects children, answers back, denies sex, or wastes money.” Recently I watched a documentary on women in Afghanistan, where in most places women still must wear a burka and can’t travel in public without a male relative.
And I recalled a conversation with Daniella, a woman I met at the Christian publishing conference where I met Sandie and Estera. Daniella asked me to critique Leah, the Christian women's magazine she edits in Bulgaria. When we paused at one page toward the back of the magazine, she shared her difficulties in finding photos of women who look Bulgarian. She pointed to one photo and said the model's coloring was right, but the readers would know she wasn't Bulgarian.
"The colors she's wearing are too bright," she explained, indicating the woman's floral pants. "Bulgarian women wouldn't wear anything that bold." She paused and looked again at the photo, thoughtfully. "But mostly, her smile's too bright. She looks too free."
She looks too free. This one sentence seemed to capture the difficult life many of the women I met there still experience in the former communist countries throughout Eastern Europe. Time and again these women's magazine editors shared stories of their readers’ struggles with rampant corruption, unemployment, depression, and alcoholism in their respective homelands. Yet these editors, in the midst of tough realities, have a passion to reach out to their countrywomen through the printed word and offer the only true solution: the hope of Christ.
Inspired by these courageous women of faith and motivated by that pointed question posed to me three years ago, I have a fresh appreciation of how blessed I am to be a woman in the West today. Sure, we have our own difficulties and devastations. But prior to my overseas experiences, I had no idea what a woman of privilege I am, what a precious gift we women in Western cultures posses. I'll admit, at various points the question about what I'm doing with my influence has haunted me, shamed me, or guilted me. But I love the moments when it empowers me—to pray for these women facing difficulties, to watch documentaries and sign up for e-mail newsletters so I’m aware of their needs, to say yes to a missions trip I'm taking next month to Cambodia.
With four other people from my church, I'll once again be training aspiring writers and editors in a country where Christian resources are scarce. A missionary who launched a publishing house there told me my status as a foreigner will grant me the respect my gender would deny me in the Cambodian culture. So I'm excited to work with Savy, a female editor there who’s trained to teach writers but hasn’t yet been able to put her training to use. I can’t wait to lend her any credibility I can—and to visit the women who run a magazine called Precious Girl for the scores of female factory workers in Phnom Penh. I'm hoping my willingness to travel halfway around the globe to offer help and encouragement will somehow serve as a tangible reminder that God sees and loves the Cambodian women deeply—and that we women in the West are rooting for them.
Because as a woman of privilege, I want to be grateful for the gift entrusted to me, mindful of other women facing daily struggles, and prayerful that the God who loves all his daughters will help us find ways to build bridges of encouragement, hope, and love to one another.
Blessings,
Posted at 5:45 PM on October 8, 2007.
Trackback and Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry: 
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/659
Post a comment
Comments
We'll be praying for you, Camerin, as you are overseas.
Posted by: Lauren Yarger on October 9, 2007
Dear Camerin,
I am very pleased to know you and i must thank TCW for that. Just finished reading your article on American Women. In addition to the physical abuse, the emotional abuse faced at the work place by women cannot be quantified. I am living in the Middle East (Dubai) and working here. The prejudice and exploitation is ongoing. My home place is in Goa in India. I feel very very lonely with the problems I encounter at work. I became aware of TCw only recently and hope to use some resources available to help me alleviate from the condition, I am currently in. I wish there was some kind of forum around to help women in this place. Thank very much for the work you are doing. Will you be travelling to the Middle East?
Posted by: Olinda on October 9, 2007
Your article certainly puts life in perspective. I believe God's Spirit is blowing on the spirits of American women to arise and be women of influence not just here in America but around the world. Thank you for making us aware. I hope future articles in your magazine will do the same. Awareness is the beginning of fanning the flames of passion in other women to use their influence to make a difference. I would like to know where we can obtain more information about this subject so we can make the women in our circles of influence aware, praying and challenged to do what we can to make a difference. Keep the torch burning.
Posted by: Angela on October 11, 2007
Thank you so much for your articles. It is always so inspiring & force me to rethink my own relationships with less privileged women than I, of wich there are so plentyfull in South Africa. I will pray for you. God bless you with the work you do.
Posted by: Liz Simons on October 12, 2007
Thank you so much for raising awareness of the blessings we experience living in freedom here in the United States. I'm forwarding this article to all the woman in my contact list in hopes that 1) they will pray for the women mentioned in the article and 2) they will know afresh the responsibilities they have as women of freedom during this time in history. It is only by God's grace that we are here so I challenge others to ask: Lord, why have you placed me here in this place at this time in history? What is my purpose and what changes need to be made to fulfill it?
Posted by: Lois Hogan on October 12, 2007
Angela,
Trans World Radio (TWR) has a ministry of prayer and awareness regarding opressed women around the world.
http://www.twr.org/ph/index.htm
They have a monthly publication with prayer requests and an annual 40 day fast with prayer on behalf of providing hope around the world.
Posted by: Barbara, missionary in Brazil on October 12, 2007
I agree with Angela wholeheartedly!! Please let me know also where I can obtain more information. I will begin to pray for these women in other countries. Thank you so much for your Blog today.
Posted by: Stefanie on October 12, 2007
Camerin,
What a challenge to those of us in the US! So often we complain about small, inconsequential things when our sisters around the world struggle against hardships we cannot even imagine. Bless you for bringing this to our attention again in a new way. Keep us informed of what we can do to help.
Anita C. Lee
Speaker, Writer, Personal Life Coach
Posted by: Anita C. Lee on October 12, 2007
Thank you for writing about our precious sisters in other lands! Yes, we must ALL pray that God, in His mercy, will comfort and encourage all women and girls worldwide! We must pray for salvation, not only of women but especially of those men who are practicing these evil ways of thinking and behaving towards women!
Posted by: Victoria Ruth on October 12, 2007
Dear Camerin Courtney!
Thank you for your thought-provoking writing and your love for these precious women! May we ALL continue praying for the salvation of the victims as well as the perpetrators of the evil! God bless you!
Posted by: Victoria Ruth on October 12, 2007
Camerin,
A hearty hello from your fellow traveler to Slovakia!
Many blessings on you as you travel to Cambodia! Looking forward to hearing how it goes.
Our family is getting ready to move to India for a year -- more adventures ahead.
Stacy
Posted by: Stacy on October 12, 2007
Hey Camerin! I live in South Africa. I guess I feel closer to all the oppression going on in non-Western society... not because it happened to me, but because Western and non-Western women live very closely together here. And yes, I have heard the heartbreaking stories... my roommate works with women who run a village while their men go to work in mines for months on end, coming home only to share the deadly AIDS virus that they got from other women at the mines.
Yet, as you say, I feel it is necessary to emphasize that we Western women have some much less visible but just as real scars... I think that, too often, we assume we know the answers, that our way of thinking is "good" while any society where, for instance, women are oppressed, is "evil". It wouldn't be hard for someone in Afghanistan (or the other side of a South African town) to look at "Western life" and see rampant "evil" - divorce, teenage suicide, materialism... also, I realize more and more, a battle of the sexes that destroys both sexes.
Some of us, by God's grace, are growing out of these scourges. And yes, we certainly can lend some of our authority/recognition to other women. But then let it be not primarily as Americans or Afrikaners or Westerners but as children of God, who are having our minds transformed.
Posted by: Cara Meintjes on October 13, 2007
Camerin,
Thank you for showing us, here in America how
much we can do for our sisters all over the
world, by praying for them, each time they
enter our minds. The Lord of Lords can and
will do miracles when his people pray. Count
me in, to be a prayer warrior on behalf of the persecuted church.Thank you for opening our eyes. In His Glorious Name, ~Vicki
Posted by: Vicki on October 15, 2007
Ms. Courtney
I am thankful to Yahweh Almighty for people like you and the resorces that you have to help others, you make the words "Am I My Brother's Keeper" come to life, I will continually pray for you and your endeavors, as well as all the women all around the world for God's peace. When you live in a world of freedom it becomes hard to acknolledge that others suffer. Blessings to you and yours. May Yahweh lead your path, in his sons holy name.
Posted by: Noemi on October 17, 2007
Camerin - thank you for your passionate blog. While I truly was moved reading it (I share this same burden for hurting women), I share Cara's thought posted above that we must be sure our passionate service be not to any human culture or line of thought, but to God alone...
SO, in keeping with His Word which asks the older women to instruct the younger women, I give you this advice: Always check that the "freedom" you share with these hurting women is Christ's freedom and not worldly "liberation."
May God bless and keep you and enlarge your circle of influence!
Posted by: Susan on October 22, 2007