.- A researcher at Washington D.C.’s Georgetown University has found that impoverished women in India are more likely to improve their economic circumstances after converting to Christianity.“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 Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.
Shah presented her initial findings of a pilot study looking at “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. 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. Dalits are considered the “outcasts” of or “pariahs” of society in India.
