Sewing Her Way Out of Poverty

[groovedaddy]

I came to Kenya partly to help make a PBS documentary about empowering women as a way to lift families and communities — men included — out of poverty. And I promptly met a prostitute-turned-businesswoman who epitomizes that theme.

Jane Ngoiri is a 38-year-old single mom who grew up in a slum and dropped out of school after the eighth grade. She married at age 18, but when she was pregnant with her second child, her husband informally took a second wife (polygamy is common for Christians here as well as Muslims), and she was nudged out. Jane soon found herself with small children, no home and no money.

To survive, she sold her body for the next five years. It was a perilous existence in Mathare, a collection of dangerous slums in Nairobi. The area, a warren of winding, muddy alleys, is consumed by crime and despair.

Regular jobs are rare, and many men self-medicate in ways that perpetuate self-destructive cycles of hopelessness. Social workers estimate that one-third of the slum’s men get drunk every night — spending about $1.50 an evening, which could otherwise finance their children’s education. Poverty becomes self-replicating.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/opinion/kristof-sewing-her-way-out-of-poverty.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

[SharonAnn]

1. Women's money helps their families. Men's money may not.

In these types of situations, it's much more helpful for women to earn an income because that goes to support their family.

Men's salaries and education may go to themselves alone.

Maybe it has something to do with extreme poverty and strict gender roles. Not sure what it is, but it's been noted before in programs like the Grameen bank, teaching women in India/Africa how to install solar technology instead of teaching men.