Women and Power

“One of the things I decided on a personal level,” says Aruna Alexander, an Indian-born ordained minister of the United Church of Canada and chairperson of a number of international bodies, “was that I was not going to allow someone else to define me; or if they did define me, that I was not going to internalise that definition”.1 For women living in a social and religious culture that deems them second class, it requires power to articulate and implement such a decision. “A woman’s place is in the home” successfully domesticates them, cuts off their options and removes them from the spheres of development and power.