You know, when we grew up, as a woman, maybe not my time, but my parents’ time, as a woman, they wouldn’t go to school. And things changed when we were growing up—we went to school. And for me, the challenges that I can say I have as a woman, that I have faced would be transitioning from living in a rural area, where you do everything as a woman. It doesn’t matter if there’s a man, all the boys, it doesn’t matter. They don’t do anything. They just wake up and take a shower and go somewhere. Women do everything in the home. Then you have to transition and maybe leaving the rural area and coming here into the urban areas, where life is different. Then you find yourself mixed with a lot of people, you know, people of different colors, and different cultures and all of that. Maybe the challenge that women face is you don’t always get treated like men would be treated. You go to your school, your employment place, and men are always esteemed higher than women. I think that’s one thing that I’ve looked at as a woman and said, “I don’t want to live my life like I can’t make my own choices! I don’t want to live my life and compare myself to men.”
And as a black woman, you continue to be disadvantaged at work. You’re kind of esteemed like you can’t make a contribution. And some of us, or some women take it to mean that they’re useless, and that actually demoralizes them and they can’t stand up for themselves because they think that’s how we are, that’s how we’re made. I think that, for me, the church has helped me to break that barrier, and I’ve started to realize that, as a woman, I’m a daughter of God. I have the potential to reach where other people can reach, color or whatever, and where men can reach. Any church that you come to should also understand that, as women, we have a role to play as a mother. And we’re here to help our husbands. Not to be a subject to your husband, but to be a companion, and that helps you realize that you can’t keep on putting yourself down. If there’s something that you feel you’re capable of doing, you do it, you excel at it, and nobody will say anything about that. So I think those are the challenges that women face.