Thursday 12 March
by Rev Valerie Watso, Islay
I was brought up in the centre of Glasgow, but am now living on an island where my great-great-grandmother Ann lived all her life. She died in her 80s half-a-mile from the place where she was born. I am humbled by the poverty in which she lived – the daily hardships of life as an agricultural labourer, feeding a family of eight children on very little, with no prospect of conditions improving. All the poor suffered, of course; men too worked laboriously for little reward, and little apparently to hope for. But Ann saw her three sons leave the island and make their living and establish their families elsewhere. It is the poverty of opportunity for Ann and women like her that both humbles and distresses me. It was not just their own fathers and husbands who dictated the route their lives took… it was the whole of society which hampered their independence, limited their education, restricted their freedom of movement, denied the fulfilment of their potential. The lives of women were 'cabin'd, cribbed, confined'.
A friend who is a midwife has spoken to me of patients in this country today who are always chaperoned by husband or a family member, who are never left alone with a nurse or doctor, who are not allowed to communicate with anyone around them, and when their 'confinement' is over, return to a home no less confined than life was for women 150 years ago.
Christian Aid
Daily Reflection
In many societies, women can’t leave home without a chaperone. Our partners support income-generating projects to do at home, such as cultivating silk worms in Afghanistan.
Give 30p for each place you go to on your own today.