Emma Watson on gender justice

#992 for broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 9 Nov 2014.

Recently British actor Emma Watson gave a stirring speech to the United Nations to launch the #HeForShe campaign for gender equality. As the Bible Society’s Dr Greg Clarke reports in Eternity newspaper, Granger observed that:

Women report almost universally a sense of being devalued, discredited, sexualised and ignored from an early age. Almost without exception, they tell tales of how their view of themselves became worse and worse as adolescence set in; how their self-image is shaped by male negative opinion; and how most of life is a struggle just to keep your head above water in a male-dominated world.

Dr Clarke agrees, but then says: “Why do entertainers have more clout at present than church leaders and other public Christians? It is because we haven’t stepped up and spoken as we should … we have kept to ourselves … [when] we should have been leading the way, Wilberforce-style, on issues such as violence against women.”

He’s right.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.