Should I be a single missionary or should I find a mate and then go?
How do singles deal with loneliness and isolation overseas?
What are women allowed to do on the mission field?
» more related questionsQ: Are single women missionaries accepted in third-world countries? Married women without children?
A: Women missionaries are accepted.
WEC International, like many other missionaries, is approximately 62% female. Of these, about half are married to the 31% of our missionaries who are married men. This leaves about 31% single women and about 7% single men.
Anyway, we have found that single women are definitely accepted in third-world countries. They have to live in the culture, generally as part of a team, and build their credibility, but they can do so. With over 90 years of history we have had hundreds of successful single women. Single men actually have a rougher time.
Married women without children are also accepted if they can accept their own childlessness and not feel that God has rejected them.
Anyway, we have found that single women are definitely accepted in third-world countries. They have to live in the culture, generally as part of a team, and build their credibility, but they can do so. With over 90 years of history we have had hundreds of successful single women. Single men actually have a rougher time.
Married women without children are also accepted if they can accept their own childlessness and not feel that God has rejected them.
A: Single women are accepted as missionaries
I served overseas for 12 years as a church planter and am single. I believe single women missionaries can be readily accepted in any culture. I work with single women in our mission and am involved in a pre-field training session for single women.
Single women are more readily accepted in some cultures than other, but acceptance comes through relationship just as anything else does on the mission field. I have had total strangers (men and women) ask me, more than once, such things as, "Don't you want to be married?" or "What's wrong with you that you don't have a husband?" If you are confident in the Lord's call on your life and that for this time (or forever) He has you where you are, others will accept that, too.
Over time as I became friends with married national women (there were very few single women where I served), they found it was a great benefit to have a mature single woman as a friend (I say "mature" as opposed to a teenager or university age). If I went to their home, it was easier to talk with only their children present if we didn't have to referee two sets of children interacting. Once their children were in school they would ask someone else to take them home for lunch and ask if we could go shopping or somewhere else they wanted to go but never had an opportunity to get to. It was also easy to ask me to a meal because I was only one mouth to feed whether the issue was lack of funds for food or because the home was too small to squeeze in a whole family (if they had to invite not just the wife but also husband and kids).
Women would ask me to come teach them to make specialty food. One Christmas I made cookies with 17 different women! It was easy to invite me out to their home village with the extended family because, once again, I was one person and fit in better than a crowd and the extended family welcomed me in. It was both easy for me to get around (without arranging children/husband's schedules) and for them to be around me. All of this led to a lot of trust, deep relationships, and a lot of one-on-one discipling. Single women make great missionaries. That's why there are so many of us.
Single women are more readily accepted in some cultures than other, but acceptance comes through relationship just as anything else does on the mission field. I have had total strangers (men and women) ask me, more than once, such things as, "Don't you want to be married?" or "What's wrong with you that you don't have a husband?" If you are confident in the Lord's call on your life and that for this time (or forever) He has you where you are, others will accept that, too.
Over time as I became friends with married national women (there were very few single women where I served), they found it was a great benefit to have a mature single woman as a friend (I say "mature" as opposed to a teenager or university age). If I went to their home, it was easier to talk with only their children present if we didn't have to referee two sets of children interacting. Once their children were in school they would ask someone else to take them home for lunch and ask if we could go shopping or somewhere else they wanted to go but never had an opportunity to get to. It was also easy to ask me to a meal because I was only one mouth to feed whether the issue was lack of funds for food or because the home was too small to squeeze in a whole family (if they had to invite not just the wife but also husband and kids).
Women would ask me to come teach them to make specialty food. One Christmas I made cookies with 17 different women! It was easy to invite me out to their home village with the extended family because, once again, I was one person and fit in better than a crowd and the extended family welcomed me in. It was both easy for me to get around (without arranging children/husband's schedules) and for them to be around me. All of this led to a lot of trust, deep relationships, and a lot of one-on-one discipling. Single women make great missionaries. That's why there are so many of us.
