Christianity helps women rise out of poverty, economist finds

Rome, 21 December 2013: A researcher at Washington D.C.'s Georgetown University has found that impoverished women in India are more likely to improve their economic circumstances after converting to Christianity.

“Conversion actually helps launch women on a virtuous circle. A woman feels better, she's part of an active faith community, she works more, she earns more money: the extra money she earns and saves encourages her to earn more and save more and plan and invest in the future,” said Rebecca Samuel Shah, research fellow at Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

Shah presented her initial findings of a pilot study looking at “patterns and directions where conversion had an impact” on Dalit women in Bangalore, India at a conference on “Christianity and Freedom” held in Rome on December 13-14.

Shah and her team studied 300 women who lived in a Dalit slum community over the course of 3 years. When they began their research, they did not know that 23 percent of the women being interviewed were actually converts to Christianity. Dalits are considered the “outcasts” of or “pariahs” of society in India.

“One is actually born a Dalit, you cannot leave a Dalit status. You’re born and you live and you die a Dalit,” Shah explained. Moreover, “Dalits are not allowed to go near a (Hindu) temple, or touch a religious object that is used in worship.” Because “they don’t want to live on the margins” of society, “they are converting to Christianity,” she noted.

Shah's study yielded some surprising results about the impact of Christian conversion on the lives of Dalit women in “a very violent urban slum.” The majority of Hindu, Muslim and Christian Dalit women interviewed were illiterate. Many belong to a microfinance program which gives them access to loans which they then use towards their children's education or to run a small business.

The first “unexpected pattern” Shah encountered was in housing. “The converts converted their loans to purchasing houses, and turned dead capital into resources to generate additional capital.” Housing is an exceptionally important issue because “these people live in a slum community. It’s a transient community, they’re originally migrant workers, they had de facto rights to the property, but did not have legally enforceable title,” said Shah.

The second “dramatic” finding in Shah’s study concerned domestic violence. A national family health survey in India in 2005-2006 indicated that 86 percent of the women interviewed nationally had never told anyone that they had been abused.

According to Shah, this large scale study indicated that a woman’s religion was an important indicator of whether or not she would seek help. “Only 24 percent of Hindu women sought help, and 22 percent of Muslim women, but 32 percent of Christian women sought help,” she noted. “It was a unique finding. We were not looking for this,” added Shah.
Source: CNA/EWTN News