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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This article explores the key factors conditioning the position of women in developing countries and then searches official Catholic social teaching for a response. The first major section of the article explores gender bias as it shapes development efforts in the third world. Findings indicate that substantial progress in developing nations depends on including women in decision-making processes at all levels. Such inclusion requires improved access to resources as a significant element in the elimination of gender bias.
The second section of the article addresses official Catholic social teaching as it pertains to the status of women in society. This section concludes by identifying two significant affirmations in the tradition and three limitations.
A final section challenges the tradition of Catholic social teaching by calling for both the development and adoption of an anthropology that realizes the radical equality and fundamental difference between women and men and a fuller inclusion of women in the very process of developing Catholic social teaching.
1 Siglin, Doug, “International Assistance: New Act for a New World,” World View 7 (Fall 1994): 35.Google Scholar In 1994 the Clinton administration submitted to Congress a comprehensive new bill, the Peace, Prosperity and Democracy Act of 1994, to replace the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended.
2 The Church in the Modern World (#9) in Walsh, Michael and Davies, Brian, eds., Proclaiming Justice & Peace: Papal Documents from “Rerum Novarum” through “Centesimus Annus” (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third, 1991).Google Scholar Numbers in parentheses refer to paragraphs in that edition. All further citations from papal documents will be taken from this source, unless otherwise noted.
3 Examination of the very different social contexts of women in different parts of the world, while essential to the realization of women's full participation in society and culture, lies beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, the following discussion includes indications of where such differences arise and provides in endnotes resources for studying them.
4 World's Women Data Sheet (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau in collaboration with UNICEF, 1985).Google Scholar
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7 For this discussion of the dimensions of gender bias, I am deeply indebted to the work of Jodi L. Jacobson, particularly her Worldwatch Paper 110 which presents a clear analysis of the dimensions and implications of gender bias in development efforts. See Jacobson, Jodi L., Gender Bias: Roadblock to Sustainable Development, Worldwatch Paper 110 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 09 1992).Google Scholar
8 The New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Sexism,” by M. A. Farley.
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10 Ibid., 10. Jacobson notes that in areas where access to resources is particularly distorted, such as in education, women tended to fall behind men. The gender gap in literacy, for example, actually grew during the decades of economic growth.
11 Ibid., 13. Jacobson refers her reader to several sources for additional evidence of this trend, including Carr, Marilyn, “Technologies for Rural Women: Impact and Dissemination” in Ahmed, Iftikhar, ed., Technology and Rural Women: Conceptual and Empirical Issues (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985).Google Scholar
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15 George Acsadi and Gwendolyn Johnson-Acsadi, “Safe Motherhood in South Asia: Sociocultural and Demographic Aspects of Maternal Health,” background paper prepared for the Safe Motherhood Conference, Lahore, Pakistan, 1987. Cited in Jacobson, , Gender Bias, 15.Google Scholar
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17 For a variety of articles on related issues by theologians, see Carr, Anne and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, eds., Women, Work and Poverty, Concilium 194 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987).Google Scholar For perspectives from those involved in development, see Vickers, Jeanne, Women and the World Economic Crisis (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1991)Google Scholar, and U.N., Women: Challenges to the Year 2000.
18 For a more complete discussion, see Fischer, Clare B., “Liberating Work” in Weidman, Judith L., ed., Christian Feminism: Visions of a New Humanity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), esp. 124–34.Google Scholar
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22 Ibid.
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26 For a complete discussion, see U.N., Women: Challenges to the Year 2000.
27 Women in Development: A.I.D.'s Experience, 1975-1985, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: A.I.D., 1987).Google Scholar Cited in Vanderslice, , “Getting Aid to Women,” 2–3.Google Scholar
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29 For the structure of this section and even for its title, I am indebted to Vickers, Women and the World Economic Crisis, esp. chaps. 1-2.
30 The following brief analysis of the causes of the current world economic crisis is based on a talk given by Frances Stewart (Senior Research Fellow, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford) at a UN/NGO workshop on Debt, Adjustment, and the Needs of the Poor, held in Oxford in September 1987. Cited in ibid., 1-2.
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33 Ibid., 5.
34 Several United Nations studies emphasize the overwhelming burdens that structural adjustment policies have placed on the poor and the compelling need to change course. See, e.g., Cornia, G. A., Jolly, R., Stewart, F., eds., Adjustment with a Human Face (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987).Google Scholar
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37 Ibid., 39. To compare this general description of third-world conditions to a regional case, see The Invisible Adjustment: Poor Women and the Economic Crisis, UNICEF: The Americas and the Caribbean Regional Office, Regional Program: Women in Development (Santiago, Chile: Alfabeta Impresores, 1989).Google Scholar
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41 Said with regard to the achievement of universal equal education but easily applicable to the achievement of economic equality (Education of the Girl Child: Her Right, Society's Gain, v).
42 See Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World (#3.1).
43 For a discussion of this shift in methodology, see Curran, Charles E., “Changing Anthropological Bases of Ethics” in Curran, Charles E. and McCormick, Richard A., eds., Readings in Moral Theology, No. 5: Official Catholic Social Teaching (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1986), 188–218.Google Scholar
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45 On Christian Marriage in Carlen, Claudia, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, vol. 3: 1903-1939 (Raleigh, NC: Pierian Press, 1981).Google Scholar
46 This phrasing of the argument for a family living wage is not meant to imply that the argument is always, or even usually, made from the woman's perspective. Indeed, Leo XIII based his argument on the man's right to provide for his family.
47 While these shifts in emphasis and methodology are evident in the passages from John XXIII's encyclicals which follow in this discussion. Curran makes an explicit argument for them in his article, “Changing Anthropological Bases,” esp. 195-202.
48 Riley, Maria and Sylvester, Nancy, Trouble and Beauty: Women Encounter Catholic Social Teaching (Washington, DC: Center of Concern, NETWORK, The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 1991), 21.Google Scholar
49 Ibid., 21.
50 Dorr, Donal, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), 300–301.Google Scholar
51 For a comprehensive development of this argument, see Ruether, Rosemary, Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper, 1993)Google Scholar, esp. 165-72.
52 Paul, John II, On the Family, Apostolic Exhortation: Familiaris Consortio (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1982).Google Scholar
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