Photo by Steve Allen
Recently a poster stopped me in my tracks in a crowed airport. It contained an image of a poor woman in a developing country with the words “I am powerful.”
Yes, she is, I thought.
The world might tend to think that this same person could be one of the least powerful people around. But what gives her power?
Is it education? Money? Fame? Well, those things can certainly help, but it’s really ideas that enable her to make a powerful difference.
I considered this again when I read an opinion piece in the Huffington Post called The Decade of the Woman Is Upon Us. It mentions a study indicating that over one billion women will enter the workforce or start businesses by 2020. Now I don’t know how that compares to numbers of men, but it sounds like a fairly astonishing number. Additionally, it says that in the next ten years, generation Y women across race and ethnic lines will dominate the professional workforce, expanding their roles in upper management in professional services firms and in professions such as law and medicine.
That’s going to be interesting.
So what is it that’s driving this change toward more equality for women? It seems to me that letting ideas shine through us has something to do with this. When I worked in economic development focused on several countries in Africa, it started to become clearer and clearer to me that all of us – women, men, children – all have access to ideas, from our divine Source – whether it’s ideas that lead to supply for ourselves or others, peace, stability, happiness, companionship, health, or any other need. Regardless of what situation we find ourselves in.
Photo courtesy of mbelibrary.org
One woman who was empowered by ideas is one who founded my religion – Mary Baker Eddy. She turned the status quo on its head when she was brave enough to counter male dominated religion in New England in the late 1800’s. This was before women even had the right to vote in America. Eddy had some incredibly different thoughts about the nature of reality and of mankind, including women, as individuals having complete freedom to express all of God’s qualities, including harmony, health, and supply. In fact her ideas were so significant that she’s been named one of only 10 women in the The Atlantic’s list of 100 most influential Americans of all time.
I look forward to seeing more women, and all people, recognize that they have powerful ideas too and can help themselves and society with these ideas.
