The Power of Vulnerability

I recently came across this amazing TED Talk (also below) with Brené Brown, an American social scientist who took to the painstaking task of studying vulnerability in human emotions; specifically, what separates people who are able to love wholeheartedly from those who claim they cannot. Her study was brave in that it became a personal exploration that she was able to then relate to big picture issues facing the world around her.

What Brown discovers is that those who have more confidence and are more open to loving relationships also make themselves very vulnerable in life, as in, they take on more risks. She also observed that people in America numb themselves to vulnerability, and this can be evidenced by the fact that we are "The most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history."

What do her findings mean for society at large? I'm not entirely sure, but I think the notion that we as a people need to confront vulnerability and embrace it can be a powerful goal, to start.

Can Sharia Law Benefit Women in the West?

Photo courtesy of Shirin Neshat

A recent article by Indiana attorney Rafia Zakaria in Guernica magazine begs the question of whether or not Islamic feminism is possible.

Zakaria takes us from her personal account of a childhood spent in Pakistan, to her experiences as a social worker helping battered women in Indianapolis, where the complexities faced by married women in the Muslim world seem without boundaries. Ironically, it was in Indianapolis that the author realized that an Islamic version of a prenuptial agreement could grant women more rights than one filed in America.

Representing a Jordanian woman whose husband divorced her by forging her signature then abandoning her in a motel room, Zakaria worked tirelessly to help the woman gain more rights than American law had allowed. In a harrowing tale fraught with many obstacles, Zakaria eventually managed to grant the woman a fair chance at financial stability in her chosen home country--by convincing the court to honor her Islamic pre-nup.

Zakaria's piece couldn't be more timely, as a handful of state legislatures are contemplating passing policies that would ban Sharia law from being practiced in the U.S. Whether or not Sharia law is in all actuality a threat to state and federal constitutions is also under debate. So far the squeakiest wheel in the "Sharia v U.S. law" debate has been Newt Gingrich, who received a standing ovation at a Values Voter Summit recently by demanding a national call to action regarding the issue.

The author's conclusion from her client's ordeal is that sometimes even traditional, faith-based laws can strengthen the U.S.'s more modern court systems. But is a breach in the separation of church and state even tenable to westerners, even if it does lift the oppression of women?

Zakaria writes, "...if things are to change, the recipe lies not in eliminating faith from the legal sphere but rather redefining it in a way that empowers women using the very tools that were used to enslave them."

I want to agree with this assessment, but is it really possible to take minute aspects of Sharia law and integrate them into the U.S. justice system in a way that is progressive and beneficial to all?

BIG IDEAS: Economic Jargon

You're probably familiar with the metaphor of the economy as a machine--phrases like "jump-starting the economy" or "economic engine," or the idea that the economy is something that is currently broken and in need of repair. Feminist economist Nancy Folbre says that the words we use to describe the economy are more important than we might realize, and in this podcast on Economica, she suggests an alternative metaphor:

"The [new terminology] that I’ve suggested ... is the economy as a beating heart. There are mechanical replacements for hearts, so it’s not that they don’t have certain processes which can be a little bit reminiscent of the machine metaphor. But the heart is also much more organic. And key to the idea of a heart metaphor is circulation. That is you have to keep the resources moving around to keep the economy healthy. So you bring in ideas of health. You bring in ideas of circulating and keeping things moving ... the heart is also the location of care and responsibility, so you bring in that aspect as well. ...We need to look at the fact that what we want from an economy includes a lot of things that aren’t measured in GDP. We want an economy that also allows us to spend time with our children. And for children to have interaction with care and caregivers."

What do you think? What kind of metaphor would you suggest for the way the economy works, or should work?


Economic Jargon, Nancy Folbre [Economica: Women and the Global Economy]

BIG IDEAS: Gender Budgeting

Economist and gender budgeting expert Jane Midgley redistributed the Obama administration's budget for the U.S. to better address the unique needs of women. Says Midgley:

"The current budget is drastically weighted toward military spending. My budget shows a large reduction in military, homeland security, and prison spending; a large reduction in International Affairs spending due to the huge percentage of that category that goes to military and arms support; and increased social spending on housing, education, and community development."

What would the country look like with this kind of budget? Where could we make gains? Where might we experience setbacks?

Gender Budgeting and the U.S. [Economica: Women and the Global Economy]

BIG IDEAS: Macro Solutions

Microfinance has been lauded as a potential solution for global poverty and a way to empower marginalized women. But in this essay for Economica Zainab Salbi says we can't settle for micro solutions:

"Around the world, women's work is unrewarding work: it means low pay and long hours. Women farmers don't own the land they cultivate. Women factory workers are paid less and often intimidated, sexually harassed or exploited. Female domestic workers are not unionized and face a high risk of trafficking and other exploitation, particularly if they are undocumented members of the "grey" economy.

...Women must be empowered as economic players across the spectrum--as laborers, managers, entrepreneurs and investors.

So what does this mean? What would it take to integrate women across the economic spectrum? It's certainly a tall order. We must reframe the way we think about economics, asking at every turn 'Where are the women?'"

What do you think? Is microfinance good enough? What are some other ways that women can be empowered to work as true change-agents in the global economy? Is it a matter of changing our mindset, or are there other hurdles to overcome, too?

Women Need Macro Solutions, Too [Economica: Women and the Global Economy]