Category: boxed

How to Create Gender Equality

How to Create Gender Equality


I think this desperate need within society is not easy at all to bring into being – to put it mildly. However, as it’s been in the news again just lately, I would like to have a go at how I believe it can be done.  We have particularly noted the wages problem in the BBC. And, make no mistake, we are told it’s much worse throughout the rest of the country.  If one happens to have been born female, then those persons will receive around 17% less than their male counterpart, even though they may be doing exactly the same job in the same office.


Why is it not so easy to change this and bring in a satisfactory sense of equality? Because we have to change a deep set culture, or even lots of different sub-cultures, and much of the thinking that has formed that culture goes back a long way, ingraining itself into people’s thinking over many generations?


What is that ingrained thinking? At a basic level it really is a fact that Males are in charge. Because they are more intelligent? Stronger? Could it be that they are better?  Females are, of course, lesser because they are not so clever or as strong, and therefore men need to be in charge. (That is a comment of sarcasm – please don’t write in to complain.)


What we tend to do is address symptoms of this disease. This means that we are wanting to increase women’s wages and make it, “equal jobs for equal pay” right across the board.  The trouble is that such an action, once taken, still will not have addressed the thinking, just the symptoms that came into being because of that thinking.


Legislation would change things, though that would be somewhat of a blunt instrument. We know that laws can change wrong to right (and sometimes even change right to wrong), so we must not underestimate the power of a passed law by government.


However, I do think we need to address the issue of equality at its base. The foundational  base is how people think. The way that people think has been formed by their family, the government, the educational system, the community that they mix with, the business pressures that they have been exposed to, the history that brought the issue into being, and even the language. 


So it’s about changing people’s thinking. Changing the thinking that says men are superior, woman are inferior.   That means influencing, educating, legislating and seeking to change the cultural mind-set that makes the acceptance of the statement above acceptable.


I listened recently to young lads, of non UK origin being interviewed on TV about what they thought about the so called “honour killings”. Their answers were horrific. They said things like, “If my sister had dishonoured my family, then, yes, I think she should be killed”.   The whole idea that women are lesser, builds the strong presupposition that their freedoms of expression, their friends, their choice of dress, and all of their relationships must of necessity be controlled by men.


Sumptuary legislation, where ever it comes from, is always about power and domination.  I hear comments like, “… but that woman chose to dress like this!”  My question is one step further back. “Who pressurises them to choose, or to exercise their supposed freedom in that way?”  The probable answer is their religion, the law, their culture, and all those facets of life that are their personally accepted conventions.  Then we need to ask, “Why is it so?” The answer will be, “Because men dictate it”. (https://adrianhawkes.co.uk/sumptuary-legislation-2/)


We can achieve equality, but we need to deal with the symptoms, i.e. equal pay and opportunities and the like, but we also need to address the underlying cultural perception. We will need to do that by education, legislation and a strong argument against our historical position. In other words; a full scale attack on the current cultural position and underlying thinking.










Adrian Hawkes

Adrianhawkes.blogspot.co.uk

Edited KL

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Maybe I need some Helpful Understanding?

Maybe I need some Helpful Understanding?

It seems to me that after deciding on becoming a follower of Jesus, one then enters a relationship with God Himself.  This effectively changes the way that we are. This, I understand, is done by changing our minds by changing the way we think, which will in turn change our actions.
So; we should become the kind of people who love our enemies, do good to those who would seek to harm us, treat others as more important than ourselves, recognise that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore need to be respected and highly regarded.  I would then expect us (that is-all Jesus followers) to be generous, to see neither male nor female, bond nor free, this nationality or that – in fact caring for one another however possible
So; I am not sure how to express my disappointment, and lack of understanding on several fronts. Recently, reading an American article, (and I don’t think what I am about to say only reflects only on the USA- it just happened to be an American writer whose article I was reading) the writer noted that in the restaurant industry in the USA it was difficult to get staff to do the Sunday shift. They surveyed widely to try and understand why this was so.  Waiting staff are apparently not that well paid in America, and therefore tips become a very important part of staff income. 
It appeared, after the results of the survey had been assessed, that staff did not like the Sunday shift as they said, that, “Sunday is the day that all the church people come in to eat –  and they are the meanest and least generous of our customers”.  Why is it like that?
Friends of mine, both in the journalistic as well as the political world, tell me that the most vitriolic letters and communications, the ones that are “the most condemning” and, in their words, “the most unkind” of all the correspondence they receive (and this is both in the USA and in the UK) comes from people who express in their letters, that they are Christians.  Again why is this so?
I know it has always been a “secret evil” in society, but again; why is it that we keep seeing the misuse of children and the abuse of people of the opposite sex from selfish desires, so often by Christians who express themselves as leaders in the church or in church organisations.  Why?
I wonder!
Have these people really met God? Do they really understand what it is to have been changed by their relationship with God?  Or are they just “label” people? Are they hiding under the epithet “Christian” as a word that may seem to be a useful label to stick on their activities to cloak their dark activities?
Recently, I have stopped responding when people ask me, “Are you a Christian?”I wonder what that means. Usually my response is, “I am a follower of Jesus, and I want that to be more than just a label. I want it to be demonstrated in living lifestyle and action.”
Jesus said to his early followers; “This is how people will know that you are my disciples, in that you have love one for another”. 
I reckon that is not just love for other disciples. I think it should be possible to demonstrate that in the wider world with all races, colours and creeds.  To people who are created in the image of “the God who is there.”
What is it that I have not understood?
A.h
E. KL
w. 610.

I can do it!

I can do it!


Recently my good friend Jeff Lucas wrote some stuff about people saying, “With God all things are possible.” “So with God you can do anything?” He went on to say that he/you everybody who reads that scripture, couldn’t do somethings. “Yes – we can’t do anything, (like fly without tickets or speak Chinese unless we learn it) but we can do all things through Christ who strengthens – in other words, what he has called us to.
Peter got out of the boat. The others didn’t.” He also noted he couldn’t fly without an aeroplane. He cannot breathe underwater. He went on to list other things that he was not good at all. It was all very true and, as usual, Jeff expressed it in a very readable and funny way.  You will know that if you have read any of his many books how he writes things.
 He was, of course, unpacking that verse of scripture in the Bible that says “I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me”.  You can find that passage in Philippians Chapter 4 verse 13.
I often hear those “well meaning” “spiritual” people say things like, “You can do it with God! We can do all things!”
It’s obvious that when Paul was talking to the Philippians Christians, he was explaining that he had had bad times and good times, and that God was able to take him through any kind of time.
So, “Yes!” Jeff is right. However, I do get a bit bored with those “I live in a box people.” You know the type. I am referring to those who are always telling others, “It can’t be done”, or worse, “This is the way it is done and there is no other method or alternative”.
This breed of “wisdom” often surfaces in some people when they hear somebody thinking out of the box they exist in.
It has seemed to me for a long time, that if one knows – that is, if one, really knows God, then they have, (or, “should have”, because often those claiming to know Him don’t seem to) a very broad view of life. Meaning; where is it all going? What’s the plan?
 With those who are knowing God in a intimate way, it is a bit like looking from the top of a mountain and seeing further than those who are down in the valley. This releases them so that they are seeing the alternatives, conceiving the possibilities, perceiving the new – and even the impossible.
It also seems to me that that we can actually do a lot of things because God is with us that we would never be able to do if He wasn’t.
I know that my atheist friends struggle with that idea. They struggle with the idea of answered prayer. They struggle with the idea of God intervening on behalf of someone else. They struggle with the whole idea of miracles – boy do they struggle with that one! “It’s all just one big accidental coincidence”, I hear so often.  I have had a lot to say about coincidences. Look up:
Their negative rationale goes on. And whilst others struggle with answered prayer, God’s interventions, Miracles and the like, I struggle with an answer that would satisfy my life experience of knowing God. I am talking of an answer that would properly explain my own answered prayer. I am thinking of such as moments when I find £10.00 at my feet via the natural wind after a brief one line prayer immediately answered.
 I am remembering witnessing one woman’s blind eyes opening and acknowledging colour after laying hands on her and being amused at her sudden knowledge of the colour of her slippers.
Coming out of court recently, after a case where our own lawyer told us, “This is what has to happen – and it will happen just like this”, and then listening to the Judge say something totally different.  That lawyer, who I don’t think shared my expectations of prayer being answered, as he walked out of the court, leaned over to me and said, “I have worked in this court for many years as a lawyer. Today I have witnessed a miracle”.  
Of course, I know those who live in their mind set boxes where these sort of things do not happen, will work hard at a good explanation, and end up smiling sympathetically at my uneducated naivety.
For me, and I know many like me, we are happy that God is with us, that He does answer prayer, and that Miracles do happen. Maybe it is that boxed mindset that says, “This is how it works”, that keeps some from experiencing a more exciting way to live.
No! I can’t fly, or breathe under water, or do lots of things even though God is with me. But boy oh boy, there are things that can be done that take my breath away – metaphorically speaking of course.  
So there are lots of times when people say, “You cannot do that!” “It can’t be!” “We don’t do it!”  
Excuse me, but I did!
Edited by KL

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