More work is not necessarily empowerment
Who empowered the women? Nobody, says Jamaican Sandra Emanuel. They have simply stepped in where men stepped out.
During the last decade more women have entered the workplace, and the scope of their responsibilities there has increased. More women are accessing higher education; in Jamaica female tertiary level students significantly outnumber their male counterparts.
Women's role in the family has also changed. And they are more likely than before to be a single parent. In addition to traditional roles of nurturing, managing finances, and being the conduit for preserving culture, religion and history, women are now asked to generate an additional income to complement their spouse's. In the global competitive environment, they are required to be more qualified than their male counterpart in order to compete.
At the lecturn: A woman speaks at a United church service in Jamaica. Jamaican women have attained positions of leadership including that of Prime Minister.
But in our world today there is no real empowerment or giving of power to women; no deliberate enabling of them.
What we are experiencing is the woman's flexibility and adaptability in response to the diverse nature of the society in which she lives, not a giving of power or an enabling.
In Jamaica it is as a result of the inability or reluctance of men to carry their weight that the role of women has evolved significantly.
One could say that out of this seemingly adverse situation a lot of good has come forth.
Our women through their entrepreneurial skills have established large profitable enterprises; they have risen to the highest levels in their professions – becoming medical doctors, chief medical officers, engineers, mayors and prime minister. We can also celebrate the fact that a number of our denominations are ordaining more female pastors annually.
Yet this does not typify women across the Caribbean, neither does it typify the state of women globally.
We need to be careful of the perception that women in 2006 have a lot more positional power than say 20 years ago, and to use that to celebrate the so called empowerment of women.
Women, though qualified, are still finding that there is a glass ceiling in the corporate world. They are still denied pastoral positions in a number of denominations, and where there are clearly vacant positions, there are still a number of congregations that would not consider women as full time pastors.
Recently in the Jamaican media, there was much controversy regarding a female being named as the principal of a boys' school. Issues such as these remind us that no one has been kind enough to give power to women – to enable them.
In some spheres, the change in the roles of women could be perceived as us taking power. But we are just making what is reasonably our contribution to society.
Until we, as the people of faith, recognise and affirm the importance and uniqueness of each gender within the community, the so called empowerment of one will always threaten the position of the other, and to some extent marginalize them. Empowerment of one race, gender or creed, should be seen by all as the individual taking his or her place in the Kingdom of God.
Until then, it remains a situation of the oppressed becoming the oppressor.
Sandra Emanuel is part of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Cambridge Charge