3. Because women are valuable, contributing members of society and were created in God’s image.
Think of the Bible without Esther, or the Virgin Mary, or Mary Magdalene. Without Esther the Jewish race would have been killed in a mass genocide. Without the Virgin Mary we would not have Jesus Christ, our savior. Without Mary Magdalene the disciples may have never known that Christ had risen.
Or what about women and what they have contributed to the modern church? Mother Theresa showed us how powerful and self-sacrificing love is. Heidi Baker showed us that our God is still capable of modern miracles. And Kim Walker-Smith is leading a new generation into deeper levels of worship.
And even if none of these women did a thing for God or his people, they were created in the image of God and should be valued as such. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27
Simply because women were created in the image of God, they should be valued and celebrated. It is time for the church, the whole church, to see the value of women. And celebrating days like Women’s Day is a good start.
4. Because talking about it changes things. Women are making progress globally.
There is good news for women globally, the more people talk about the issues that women are battling today, the more change we see. According to UN Women Website, we have seen great improvement in the following areas.
1) Education: Since 1995, we’ve reached a point where girls and boys worldwide are enrolling in primary school at almost equal rates. That is a huge step forward. The next step is secondary school, where the gender gap widens again.
2) Maternal Mortality: In the last 25 years, maternal mortality has dropped by 45%, which means that half of the women who survive childbirth today wouldn’t have made it in a different time. But there’s still more work to do — 800 women a day die from basic pregnancy complications, mostly in the developing world.
3) Water access: Water is an important issue for women, since in many developing countries girls are responsible for fetching water, a task so time-consuming and difficult that it can keep them out of school or put them in danger of being attacked. Between 1990 and 2010, 2 billion people gained access to clean drinking water, relieving the burden of water-fetching from girls. Still, in Sub-Saharan Africa, women spend 16 million hours for day getting water.
4) Leadership: Since 1995, the number of women serving in legislatures has nearly doubled — but that still only translates to 22% of politicians worldwide.
