When I bought Feminist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics, Arthur said to me, “This is the perfect book for you!” Indeed, the title suggested they came from a similar background to me (reformed), and were wrestling with similar issues (feminism). Actually, the writers here are far more committed to their reformed […]
I’ve been having lots of conversations here in Australia about brokenness, guilt and how these things are particularly poignant for women. Consider the woman who yells at her child, or the one who is Facebooking when her child’s asking her to build a GUP out of Duplo (again!), or the one […]
“You’ve got a healthy baby and that’s what matters.” I heard this over and over again after I had Elliot. It’s a terrible statement to make, because it sounds like the mother’s health doesn’t matter, just the baby’s. Of course we all want the baby to be healthy, but don’t […]
My second hunch about Tanzanian women is a bit more complicated than the first, and a lot more speculative. Theory Two: women’s progress in Tanzania is hampered because their emotional expression is limited. Tanzanian society in general is hierarchical. Those at the top have the power and those at the […]
When I show our video on women to Tanzanians, they affirm it as an accurate representation of the state of play for many women in Tanzania. Since then I’ve been working on adding more shades to that, which I’ll share over this post and the next. Disclaimer: these are mere […]
When I saw the trailer for Suffragette I wondered, why focus on the story of a working class woman? After all, one of the common criticisms of first wave feminists was that they were primarily white, middle class women with blind spots on race and class. Was it trying to […]
In the space of a day, Tanzania’s The Citizen newspaper published two articles that could be called ‘feminist’. One was from a regular columnist, Caroline Uliwa, about a conversation she’d had with some girlfriends about maternal health, and how it’s failing in urban centres because, as Tanzania has ‘modernised’, some […]
Meet Jesus at uni 