Poverty has a woman's face

(Photo Courtesy: Reuters)

As the holiday season approaches, so does our awareness of the current economic crisis in our nation. As I mentioned before, the sting of poverty disproportionately affects women. Women are frequently the caregivers of the household, the lower wage-earners, and the most vulnerable to domestic violence brought about by the desperation of financial distress.We are starting to see the concrete effects of this economic instability in the lives of women. The Global Fund for Women states that the poor economy makes women and girls "particularly vulnerable to trafficking."

In this week's Philadelphia Inquirer, Alfred Lubrano reports on the increasing gender gap, particularly among minority women. He writes:

"There's always been a gender gap and wage gap," said Carey Morgan, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger. "Women must pull double duty as economic providers and child-care providers."

The extra responsibility of child care has traditionally compelled many women - especially poor women - to work part-time in jobs that offer little money or security, Morgan said.

But perhaps the most disturbing news this week regarding gender inequality in this failing economy came from NPR's Talk of the Nation. Here's what I heard the other day while driving home from work. It was so disturbing that I almost pulled over.

In Los Angeles, a massive backlog of DNA evidence kits has been discovered. A scathing audit by the city controller in October showed that the L.A. Police Department had nearly 7,000 unopened and untested rape kits. Soon after, the L.A. County Sheriff's Office disclosed it was storing another 5,000.

What this means, essentially, is that women who have been violated in the act of rape are violated again as the concrete evidence of the crime against them is effectively ignored by law enforcement.

Now, to be fair, this is not due to ignorance on the side of the police, but, according to the article, due to a lack of funding and lack of resources necessary to process this important evidence.

You just have to read the article to feel this story in your gut, particularly when it comes to the case of Jeri Elster, who was raped by a stranger who had broken into her home. After her DNA evidence sat in a vault for seven years, she asked a detective to test her rape kit. The evidence matched an accused rapist in another case, but in 1992, the statute of limitations for prosecuting rapists was six years.

The good news is that the statute of limitations has since been lengthened to 10 years. The bad news is that this means countless rapists are getting off scott-free as their victims' DNA evidence sits untouched.

The story ends with this startling statistic:
According to an investigation by Human Rights Watch, as many as 400,000 rape kits sit unopened in crime labs and storage facilities.

I don't write this post to dampen our holiday spirits but simply to keep us conscious of the very real ways that our economy disproportionately disenfranchises and victimizes women. In this season commemorating the birth of Jesus, may we remember "the least of these," those most affected by economic forces.