Christianity helps Dalit Women rise out of poverty: Research

A new research has found that impoverished Dalit women in the country are more likely to improve their economic circumstances after converting to Christianity and embrace a new identity.

"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 Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. during a recent Conference held in Rome.

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.

Recently, Shah presented her initial findings of the pilot study, "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 Dec. 13-14 and came to the conclusion that "conversion, firstly, changes who they believe themselves to be, it changes their self-conception, their belief in who they are, and secondly, it changes how they can change their family's future and themselves."

Dalits continue to face many hardships due to centuries of oppression by non-caste people in the country.

Sha explained, "One is actually born a Dalit, you cannot leave a Dalit status. You're born and you live and you die a Dalit."

"Dalits are employed in the some of the worst jobs…they scavenge, they sweep, they're tanners. They do the smelliest, dirtiest work, and therefore they 'polute'... they're 'untouchables.' They are not allowed to go near a (Hindu) temple, or touch a religious object that is used in worship," she said.

Because "they don't want to live on the margins" of society, "they are converting to Christianity," she noted.

The study by Shah and her team encountered two important issues. The first is housing. "The converts converted their loans to purchasing houses, and turned dead capital into resources to generate additional capital," they observed.

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.

"By being able to own a house, these poor women were able to get bank loans, commercial loans, which they didn't have access to before that. When you have a house you can get a loan at 3 percent, instead of from a money lender at 18 percent. So having a house is a very important investment in your future, so you can have access to very affordable credit," Shah said.

The second important finding in the study is about domestic violence.

According to a national family health survey in India in 2005-2006 revealed that 86 percent of women interviewed nationally had never tol anyone that they had been abused.

She said that 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.

Shah's own study "echoed" the national health data, in that "57 percent of women – a very large number of women – actually tell their pastor" about domestic violence.

She pointed to two key factors in the higher reporting of abuse. "These women are very closely involved, very actively involved, in their faith community. When they arrive in their weekly prayer meetings and they've got a gash across their face, or they're lacking a few teeth, they get noticed."

Furthermore, "pastors that are usually male visit the homes, and they repeatedly visit the homes, so at some point, the husband who's beating up his wife is shamed into stopping beating his wife."

This indicates a "very interesting connection" between home ownership and seeking help for domestic abuse, "because many of those women literally open the doors and bring their pastors into this very violent and very dark situation of their homes."

"It was a unique finding. We were not looking for this," added Shah.

The researcher than pointed to the underlying factors that accompany an improvement in circumstances after conversion.

"Conversion activates in the converts a powerful new concept of value and initiative," she explained.

It offers "a radically different way of seeing themselves: seeing themselves as a new creation, a new identity, made in the image of God, seeking a better life for themselves."

"Poverty is inherently depressing. It's discouraging. It's debilitating. It breeds hopelessness: 'why bother?'" she reflected.

Yet with a new Christian vision, "The future is not terrifying. It can be achieved. Because God is with them, they can invest in the future. It's not something to ignore, not something to be terrified of."

Moreover, through the combination of a new sense of identity and access to credit in microfinance, "the converts may harness their agency and capability into investing in the future to improve their lives."

Conversion, then, first "changes who they believe themselves to be, it changes their self-conception, their belief in who they are, and secondly, it changes how they can change their family's future and themselves," she said.

The Georgetown researcher noted that although they have completed a pilot study, "we're in the process of doing more rigorous research which will confirm these findings."