Prayer Squares: A Prayer for Gender Equality (SDG #5)

Our Prayer Squares are a freely-printable resource to help you pray for women and girls, and the world, using the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as an engaging framework.

Download the Sustainable Development Goal Prayer Squares
Read more of the Salvationist Prayers for Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations has set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as 'an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.'

We believe that prayer is the biggest action a Christian can begin with. Will you join us in an urgent call for prayer, as we intercede for women and girls through each of the Sustainable Development Goals?

Prayer for Sustainable Development
Goal #5: Gender Equality | Find out more
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

• 18% of 15-49yr old women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months. Female Genital Mutilation-prevalent countries cut 1 in 3 girls aged 15-19. Women spend 3x as many hours as men each day in unpaid care and domestic work. Women hold only 1 in 4 parliamentary seats worldwide. 

'God, both mercy and judgement belong to you. When we lift our eyes to see the ways women and girls are treated - unfairly, cast aside, used and abused and overlooked in the world and the Church - it is hard not to be hardened by judgement and anger. The injustice cries out, and our blood cries out like that of Abel, and the Levite's concubine from Judges. But God, our eyes look to you for mercy, and our hearts long for your justice.

We pray that girls and women would find refuge in your word, and that in reading the Bible they would see themselves in your story. Jesus, we pray that you would lift the heads of the women and girls who are low in spirit, trapped in abusive relationships, whose financial, physical, mental and sexual states are being compromised at the hands of men and those who prey upon them. Holy Spirit, Sophia wisdom, would you breathe life into their souls, and draw close to them. Breathe life into dead spaces, and teach boys and men to partner in true unity to bring your kingdom here.

Give us supernatural intellect and foresight, God, to do battle in the earthly realms of government, church policy, law and education. Show men and women the laws they may write together to enshrine women's freedom in practice. Give police the proper avenues to protect women and girls who are victims of men's abuse, and prosecute those who seek to prey upon the vulnerable.

Restore your creation God, because she is valuable in your sight. Not for our glory or sake, not for our power - but for yours, Lord. Show you glory through restoring gender equity for women and girls in your earth.

God, extend supernatural grace into the hearts of women and girls who have been abused, kept back from their gifts, cut off from safety, removed from homes, starved of companionship and betrayed by the ones they trust. Restore to them avenues of salvation, as Imago Dei - the image of God like their brothers. Give us the opportunity to build up what has been broken, and show by love and deeds what you believe to be true - that women and girls have the dignity and worth of the Creator, and the Church would act like she believes it.

Give us wisdom to see what we can change, and fortitude to endure as you redress this balance with us,

Amen.'

- Rosy Keane, The Salvation Army Women's Ministries