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Editorial
The Family Network office receives a large number of pleas for financial assistance. IAFN is not a grant-giving organisation and is regretfully not able to give money to individuals or to particular projects. Many of the cries for help are from mothers in Africa, desperate to get funds to enable them to educate their daughters and so equip them to escape from the cycle of poverty, early pregnancy, single parenthood, and more poverty. They know that, without the benefits of education, their daughters will probably be as imprisoned as they have been. Many of the articles in this newsletter tell of the problems of uneducated and deprived mothers. As with uneducated and deprived fathers, the effects on their families are incalculable. Research shows that educating women and girls is the single most effective strategy for reducing poverty.
Economic and social changes are also affecting the role of women in the family. Several of the authors make clear that women in many parts of the world are increasingly having to provide for their families. While for some this may develop opportunities and potential, it can also increase stress and overwork. More than one article indicates an increasing prevalence of drunkeness among men. Whether or not a cause of this is the erosion of men's role as providers for their family, it vastly exacerbates the burden on women. As the article from Hong Kong points out, a change in attitude – a fuller understanding of the need for partnership between men and women in the family situation – is slow in developing. The same point was made in a joint World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNESCO statement:
Women's Work
Putting today's essential health knowledge into practice will be seen by many as "women's work".
But women already have work.
They already grow most of the developing world's food, market most of its crops, fetch most of its water, collect most of its fuel, feed most of its animals, weed most of its fields.
And when their work outside the home is done, they light the third world's fires, cook its meals, clean its compounds, wash its clothes, shop for its meals and look after its old and its ill.
And they bear and care for its children.
The multiple burdens of womanhood are too much.
And the greatest communications challenge of all is the challenge of communicating the idea that the time has come, in all countries, for men to share more fully in that most difficult and important of all tasks –protecting the lives and health and the growth of their children.
Primary Health Care messages are therefore addressed not only to women but to men.
(Printed in "Partners in Health" written and published by Christians Aware 1993, ISBN 1 873372 06 X.)
In many parts of the world, the tensions and lack of understanding between men and women in the family situation can lead to violence. In this newsletter, we have included stories telling of this from Papua New Guinea, an area where a horrifyingly large number of women suffer such terrors in their family situation.
This newsletter also celebrates the strengths of women – working to bring peace in the Sudan, more social cohesion in S. India, learning new skills in the Lebanon, and in many other countries. The Christian message of love, understanding, support and practical action is the message of hope. It is being acted on in many parts of the Anglican Communion by women – and also by men – with practical projects to help women in the family and mobilise their many skills and resources. But the task is immense.
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