Through the Eyes of a Woman

  I only realized that this is a quote from Mao Zedong when Pastor Rebekah Liu from China was the speaker at an Adventist Today Sabbath seminar on October 9, 2021. The young, sympathetic, and enthusiastic ordained pastor spoke about the history and current status of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in China. In China, when all the churches that worship on Sunday were merged by the state into the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the Adventists remained independent because of the Sabbath, but the ties with the world church (General Conference) were cut. Thus, they also remained independent as far as church governance was concerned. This contributed to their ordaining men and women to the pastorate without distinction. In China, the church was the first to liberate women. Women were subject to the father, their feet were bound, limiting their mobility, and they were also subjected to their husbands in marriage. The three focal points of women's emancipation in China consisted of ...

Today is the International Day of the Girl 2021. I see encouraging posts online like the one by UNWOMEN saying, “Girls can study and take on any career. Girls are smart and innovative. On #DayOfTheGirl let's speak up against systematic barriers & long-standing stereotypes that continue to keep girls from #STEM careers.“ STEM is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Yes, girls are smart, but many girls have to face multiple challenges even in today’s world that make it difficult for girls in many parts of the world to get the necessary education to reach their goals and fulfill their dreams. We keep on saying, „Girls can do anything and be anything they want to be.“ There should be nothing that keeps them from achieving distinction. And yet, we still live in a world with a lot of disadvantages for girls that discourage them. I am reading Fiona Hill’s book There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century....

I have been following the news about women in Afghanistan. Some organizations that have been working for women’s empowerment in the country during the last 20 years are appealing for their Afghan employees to be brought to safety. Politicians have been mentioning the plight of women in particular. However, after the end of the evacuation operation, we do not hear much about efforts to help these threatened people. It is as if we were just moving on. But moving on will not help Afghanistan’s women. They are pleading not to be forgotten. Six days ago Claire Press of the BBC World Service wrote about female Afghan judges hunted by the murderers they convicted. I could not express it better and so I am copying the BBC News to show why we cannot just sit and watch as educated women in Afghanistan and their families fear for their lives: They were the trailblazers of women's rights in Afghanistan. They were the staunch defenders of the law, seeking justice for their country's mos...

    19-year-old Indian Maitri Patel is an ideal role model for millions of girls because she has reached her goal and the dream of her life. Ever since she saw her first airplane at age 8, she has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Now Maitri has got a commercial pilot’s license, after completing her flight training in a record time of 11 months. She has become India’s youngest commercial pilot. Maitri wanted to become a pilot since childhood and after completing her class XII education from Metas Adventist School, Surat, Gujarat, Maitri went to the United States to complete her pilot training program. Maitri's father Kantilal Patel is a farmer and her mother works in health care. Instead of saving for her wedding, as is often usual in India, Patel’s father invested in her education. He sold a piece of his ancestral land to pay for the flight training course fees Metas Adventist School is an English-language Seventh-day Adventist school that has served Surat since 1942. Its mi...

No matter what post I read on Facebook, I always find disgusting, hateful comments in the reactions that violate netiquette. The hatred that is spewed out there scares me. Not because I would feel threatened myself, but because it shows how little respect people have for each other today. All kinds of extremists cavort in social media under the cloak of freedom of expression. In the anonymity of the media, it's easy to condemn, threaten and insult others. I would not like to meet such people in person, but I can hardly protect myself from their statements on the Internet. That doesn't have much to do with freedom of expression, because this kind of behavior violates human dignity, which according to our constitution is inviolable. As Germans, we are generally very careful not to repeat our history. However, the number of anti-Semitic incidents is constantly increasing, and the government and politicians seem to have nothing to counter the trend. They console themselves with t...

  In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on September 6, 2021, Maria Kalesnikawa and Maxim Snak were sentenced to long prison terms. The trial was held in a closed session. The trial was not intended to provide a public platform for dissidents. The people of Belarus have long tried to resist the dictatorship of President Lukashenko. His opponents have been repeatedly silenced with police violence and arrests. After the obviously rigged presidential election results in August 2020, thousands of people took to the streets peacefully and demonstrated for months despite violence and arrests. The dictator had already had a few opponents arrested before the election, and the arrests continued, forcing the leaders of the democracy movement to flee abroad for safety. The ruler did not even hesitate to force a plane to land in Minsk to arrest a journalist. The death of an opponent in Ukraine can probably also be attributed to Lukashenko's people. It is all the more astonishing that Maria K...

  Yesterday I saw a movie about women in politics in the early days of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the post-war period, politics were completely in the hands of men. The movie showed Herbert von Karajan directing an all-male philharmonic orchestra interspersed with photos of black and white photos of groups of all-male politicians. These impressions hit home and will not be soon forgotten. However, some women were convinced that democracy needs to represent more than half the population. The 28 female representatives in the first parliament (1949-1953) made up 6,8% of the legislative body. It was only in 1987 that the percentage topped made double digits with 15,4%. The documentary movie used original film material and retrospective comments by the pioneering women themselves to show what it was like to be a parliamentarian in the male-dominated culture of the time. A clip from that time showed a couple sitting down to dinner with the commentary: “A woman has two vital ...