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There is no clear indication in the bible that women served an official leadership role in the early church. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, meaning, we should not force the bible and the church into a political standard, especially when it comes to the issue of gender roles. It is an issue of interpreting God’s word and how twisting what the bible says to do and what the men believe is best for the community. Do you agree or disagree with this?

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Woman finds the courage to defy and escape abusie husband

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Woman finds the courage to defy and escape abusie husband

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Saroj is a cook at a public school in her village, Dujana, in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Like most people in this state, she doesn't have a last name.

She walks to work down narrow streets of concrete homes with cows and buffaloes outside. She is short, only about 5 feet 2, but she walks tall and confident in her traditional mustard-colored tunic and pants. Her tanned face is framed by big, dark eyes and a square jaw.

As Saroj passes an old man sitting outside a house, she leans in close to me and starts whispering.

"That man sitting on that chair, he's my husband's elder brother," she says. "He quarreled a lot with me."

"What did he quarrel about?" I whisper back. The man, with his back to us, is still within earshot.

"Well, he wanted to control me," she says. "So that I wouldn't come and go from the house as I pleased. He wanted me to ask for his permission, that's why."

She looks indignant, her voice growing louder the farther we get from him.

Today, Saroj lives her life on her own terms. But like the vast majority of women in rural India, she spent most of her life confined to her home, obeying the men in her family.

It took her more than two decades to break free from the traditional rules of this region. What helped turn her life around was getting a job at the local school.
Married At 16, Scarred For Life
Saroj grew up in India's capital city, New Delhi. Her parents married her off at 16.

"I came here after I got married," she says.

This is her husband's village. The marriage gave her two daughters and two thick scars, 6 inches long, on the inside of her left arm. The scars are from a time when Saroj's husband hit her with a wooden stick. She says her husband loved her but would beat her whenever he got drunk.

Saroj tried to get help by telling relatives and neighbors.

"If I told someone, they'd say, 'After all, it's your husband beating you, not some random man.' "

This is a particularly patriarchal part of India. Domestic violence is common here.

But one day, after about a decade of marriage, Saroj's husband just disappeared. She searched for him for months but found no clue to his whereabouts. She didn't even know whether he was alive or dead.

Back in her village, she was treated like a widow. Widows in Haryana are often married off to one of their husband's younger brothers to keep property and children in the family. So Saroj moved in with her younger brother-in-law Dharamveer.

"I thought, well, he'll raise my children; he'll look after me," she says.

What happened was the opposite. He drank a lot and was more violent than his brother. She stayed with him, though, and bore a son. But she felt miserable and helpless.
Her Big Break
When her son was still a toddler, she met the first person who was sympathetic to her - a teacher at a local school.

"She'd come to get her daughters admitted at the school," recalls Santra Devi. "We started talking, and I came to know that poor thing, she was very sad."

Santra says Saroj told her about her husband's drinking and that she had no money for food.

"So I said why don't you come to the school and help us out with a few things?"

Santra meant odd jobs like cleaning, making tea, running errands. It was Saroj's first time working outside her home. "She didn't know anything about anything back then," Santra says. But, she says Saroj was hard-working and learned quickly.

A few years later she got her big break. In 2004, the school signed on to the government's Mid Day Meal Scheme, a program that provides free school lunch at public schools. The program requires schools to hire cooks, preferably poor and underprivileged women like Saroj.

The school hired her full time to cook lunch for the students. The pay wasn't much - less than $20 a month. But the job became a lifeline for her. For her husband, though, it was a threat, because he couldn't control her anymore.

"Her husband was awful," recalls Santra. "He would stop her on the road, beat her up. He even came into the school. If she had any money, he'd take it away from her."

He kept trying to persuade Saroj to give up her job. When she refused, he beat her more.

Santra and other teachers decided to intervene. They spoke directly to Dharamveer and threatened to report him to the police.

"We told him that if you come here again, you'll end up in jail," says Santra. "We made sure he didn't beat her on the streets either. We put pressure on him."

Their strategy worked. He stopped attacking her in public. But inside their home, Saroj says the violence continued.
The Final Blow
"I'd feel angry, because he just wouldn't change," she says.

Then one night he did something he'd never done before.

"He broke my teeth," says Saroj. "He hit me with a pipe. You know the ones we use to blow air into the wood stove? It's here somewhere. I'll show you."

She walks out to her kitchen, returns with a narrow pipe about a foot long and places it in my hands.

"This is an iron rod!" I said. The pipe is heavy and cold in my hands. " He hit you with this, on the face?"

"Yes," she says.

This time, Saroj did something she'd never done before.

"I went straight to the police," she says.

Still bleeding, Saroj walked to the police station and filed a charge. The police called her husband to the station, beat him up andlocked him up overnight.

The next morning, when he was released, she says he left the village. She hasn't seen him since. That was six years ago.
Leader Of The School Cooks
Today Saroj is the state leader of the union for thousands of women who work as school cooks and kitchen help across the state of Haryana. She has helped her fellow union members lobby for better pay and other rights.

They meet periodically in a two-room, concrete building in the nearby town of Jhajjhar. On this day, scores of women have gathered to discuss persisting problems in their jobs. Some women haven't been paid for several months. Others are worried about layoffs.

Saroj is multitasking: answering phone calls from women on their way to the meeting while listening to others in front of her and promising to take their concerns to lawmakers.

Then a new union member shows up, a skinny woman in a yellow tunic. She needs to pay her dues and sign her name in the receipt book. "I don't know how to sign my name," she says. She's illiterate and looks ashamed.

"You'll learn!" says Saroj, reassuring her. "We'll teach you. No one is born knowing everything."

Then she turns to the group, grinning, and says: "We'll even make her the chief of the Matanheil block, right?" Matanheil is the name of the rural region the woman belongs to.

As the women burst out laughing, Saroj continues.

"We women are no longer lagging behind! We're not lagging behind men anymore."

More than 2 million of India's poorest women work in public school kitchens across the country. It is a modest investment by the Indian government, but it means big changes in the lives of these women, and Saroj hopes, a way for them to live fearlessly.
This story was produced with help from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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How One Woman Found The Courage To Say No To Domestic Abuse

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Saroj is a cook at a public school in her village, Dujana, in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Like most people in this state, she doesn't have a last name. She walks to work down narrow streets of concrete homes with cows and buffaloes outside.

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Do you think qualities can be used to describe individuals, or that they change constantly and are unpredictable?

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who are some women you admire? In and out of the church?

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Why is womens history sometimes overlooked?

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"The Proverbs 31 woman is a star not because of what she does but how she does it–with valor. So do your thing...If it's fighting against human trafficking...leading a company...or getting other people to do your work for you–do it with valor. Take risks. Work hard. Make Mistakes." pg. 95

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what challenges remain in the catholic church for women today?

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How can we as women be courageous and outspoke without being disrespectful to others? If others feel disrespected by what we have to say is that something we should consider or is it not up to us - a matter of their acceptance towards opinions that differ from their own?

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How can we as women be courageous and outspoke without being disrespectful to others? If others feel disrespected by what we have to say is that something we should consider or is it not up to us - a matter of their acceptance towards opinions that differ from their own?

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Elizabeth Warren reads letter from Coreta Scott King and is told to not continue, but she argues and fights to continue the letter.

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Elizabeth Warren reads letter from Coreta Scott King and is told to not continue, but she argues and fights to continue the letter.

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The words were those of Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

But they resulted in a rarely invoked Senate rule being used to formally silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

On the Senate floor Tuesday night, Warren read aloud from a letter Scott King wrote in 1986, when King objected to President Reagan's ultimately unsuccessful nomination of then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions to a federal district court seat.

Sessions, now a Republican senator from Alabama, is President Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney general. Warren was speaking in the debate leading up to Sessions' likely confirmation by the Senate on Wednesday evening.

King wrote that Sessions used "the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens" - and that was the line Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would later cite in his objection.

"I call the senator to order under the provisions of Rule 19," McConnell said after interrupting Warren's speech, in which he said she had "impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama."

That objection came nearly 30 minutes after Warren was initially warned about impugning Sessions by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who was presiding over the Senate at the time.

Rapping on the presiding officer's desk, Daines had initially cut Warren off some 20 minutes into her speech.

"The senator is reminded that it is a violation of Rule 19 of the standing rules of the Senate to impute to another senator or senators any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming [sic] a senator," Daines said, apparently reading from a note on his desk.

"Mr. president, I don't think I quite understand," Warren replied. "I'm reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I'm simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant, and what it would mean in history for her."

Daines said his interruption was a "reminder" that didn't necessarily apply to what Warren had just said. "However," he continued, "you stated that a sitting senator is a disgrace to the Department of Justice."

Warren replied that the comment seemed to have been made not by King, but by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy - whom she also quoted - "although I would be glad to repeat it in my own words," she added.

Without mentioning that the flagged statement had been made before Sessions was a member of the Senate, Daines - repeating the words of a female staff member who seemed to be reading aloud - sought to clarify the rule's scope.

"The rule applies," he said, relaying the staffer's words, "to imputing conduct or motive through any form or voice." He added, "Form of voice includes quotes, articles, or other materials."

Warren replied, "So, quoting Sen. Kennedy calling then-nominee Sessions a disgrace is a violation of Senate rules? It was certainly not in 1986."

"In the opinion of the chair, it is," Daines said. As Warren began to speak, he added, "And the senator is warned."

That formal warning set up the later interruption - and the forced termination of Warren's remarks.

Warren sought another clarification, as to whether she is allowed to "accurately describe public views" and statements about Sessions.

Again taking cues from the same staff member whose words he repeated, Daines replied, "The chair has not made a ruling as respect to the senator's comments. The senator is following process and tradition by reminding the senator of Massachusetts of the rule and the things of which it applies."

"So, can I continue with Coretta Scott King's letter?" Warren asked.

"The senator may continue," Daines replied - granting a permission that would turn out to be short-lived.

Some 23 minutes later, as Warren spoke about Sessions' vote against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, McConnell addressed the chair to object to Warren's remarks - specifically, her earlier quoting of Coretta Scott King's words.

By that time, Warren had finished reading King's letter more than 10 minutes previously.

As The Associated Press reported:

"Quoting King technically put Warren in violation of Senate rules for 'impugning the motives' of Sessions, though senators have said far worse stuff. And Warren was reading from a letter that was written 10 years before Sessions was even elected to the Senate.

"Still, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell invoked the rules. After a few parliamentary moves, the GOP-controlled Senate voted to back him up.

"Now, Warren is forbidden from speaking again on Sessions' nomination. A vote on Sessions is expected Wednesday evening."

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Republicans Vote To Silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren In Confirmation Debate

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The words were those of Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But they resulted in a rarely invoked Senate rule being used to formally silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. On the Senate floor Tuesday night, Warren read aloud from a letter Scott King wrote in 1986, when King objected to President Reagan's ultimately unsuccessful nomination of then-U.S.

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"provides...prey... for her family"
"spies" "over the affairs of the household"
"girds her loins"–guards herself/is strong
"can...laugh in victory"–has fun in good times but not attached to it
"her husband lacks nothing of value"–he is of value for her too

pg. 76

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"Christians seem to think that because the Bible is inspired, all of it should be taken literally. Jews don't do this...[we see it] differently, as a way of understanding our Creator, rather than direct commands. Take Proverbs 31 for example. I get called an eshet chayil (a valorous woman) all the time. Make your own challah instead of buying? Eshet chayil! Work to earn some extra money for the family? Eshet chayil!" pg. 87

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Ms. Magazine: A Sustainable Solution: Mothers Out Front

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Ms. Magazine: A Sustainable Solution: Mothers Out Front

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“My job is to help organize, help empower groups of women who maybe in the past have not been used to being heard and being out front and telling their stories and voicing their concerns and talking to decision-makers,” says Miller, who started her position as organizer last March

This women's organization helps women in local communities with their everyday lives and being heard around their community. Empowering women everyday in everyday situations.

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Do you think men, women, and others are equal in strength on all levels?

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Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.

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"From my research that Proverbs 31 was never meant to be turned into  to-do list" pg. 85

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An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.

The heart of her husband trusts in her, And he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good and not evil All the days of her life.

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She rises while it is still night,

and distributes food to her household,

a portion to her maidservants.