VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)
05 February 2015 by Hannah Roberts in Rome
A landmark conference on women at the Vatican this week accepted that there is a major discrepancy between the status of women in Western culture and their role in the Church.
“In modernity, where work is the main way to avoid poverty and exclusion, women want to work, have a career and recognition of this commitment in terms of status and money equal to men. They want space in the public sphere equal to that given to men … not as secondary citizens,” the outline document for the plenary assembly at the Pontifical Council for Culture on “Women’s Cultures: Equality and Difference” said.
The paper went on to acknowledge “women who, perhaps with great difficulty, have reached places of prestige within society, but have no corresponding decisional role nor responsibility within ecclesial communities”.
In a pointed contrast between past and present the working document, produced by 15 women advising president of the Pontifical Council for Culture Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, asserted: “Women no longer spend their afternoons reciting the Rosary or taking part in religious devotions; they often work, sometimes as top managers engaged as much as, if not more than, their male counterparts, and frequently they also have to care for their families.”
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