Why We Must Be Feminists

This week’s editorial examines the role of gender in society and the Church

On February 8, the feast day of St Josephine Bakhita, Southern Africa’s Catholics are called by the bishops to turn their prayerful focus on the abuse of women and children, human trafficking and gender equality.

Announcing the day, the bishops’ spokesman, Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria, told The Southern Cross: “Despite men and women being equally children of God, women have been massively discriminated against; they are paid less, even when allowed to do the same work as men; they are sexually abused; forced into early marriages; abandoned to care for children alone. They bear the brunt of domestic violence, and with children they are the objects of human trafficking.”

This echoes the teachings of Pope Francis. In his document of the family, Amoris Laetitia, the pope wrote: “Even though significant advances have been made in the recognition of women’s rights and their participation in public life, in some countries much remains to be done to promote these rights. Unacceptable customs still need to be eliminated.”

In his comments to The Southern Cross, Archbishop Slattery noted: “Central to the problem of gender inequality is the culture of patriarchy. This refers to an entrenched system of domination by males.”

In combating these scandals against human dignity, the common sense position for Christians is to be feminist.

It is the patriarchal system of power relations that stands in the way of giving women full equal rights in all spheres of life, from rural villages to boardrooms. It is from the patriarchal system that women must be emancipated.

Of course, as Pope Francis notes, much progress has been made in improving women’s rights, and many success stories can be told of individual women breaking through patriarchal obstacles — usually by working harder and making greater sacrifices than their male counterparts.

These success stories are inspiring, but they must not blind us to the realities which women around the world face, such as the commodification of the female body and the sexual exploitation of women (ranging from sexual harassment and rape to forced prostitution), gender biases in societal norms and justice systems, labour exploitation and unequal pay, domestic abuse, genital mutilation, “honour” killings, “corrective” rapes of lesbians, and so on…

In combating these scandals against human dignity, the common sense position for Christians is to be feminist.

And here we must resist defining feminism as an ideological monolith, but as a movement that accommodates many broad philosophies and specific policies — much, in fact, as the Catholic Church does. Just as the Church’s central premise is the salvation of souls, so is the feminist movement’s central premise the social, economic and political equality of women and the liberation from the patriarchal system that dictates to women.

Some men see this as a threat to their patriarchal privilege. They regard the idea that men should not exercise domination over women as emasculating, even seeing themselves as victims of the feminine claim to equality.

Often such men articulate their frustration by resort to verbal or physical violence. This cannot be tolerated. Violence against women, whatever the source, must at all times be unequivocally condemned.

The answer to gender violence and other forms of domination is to step up the efforts for the emancipation of women.

But its own limitations must not disqualify or discourage the Church from emphatically condemning the resurgence of misogyny and insisting on gender equality in all spheres of society.  

The Catholic Church also needs to enter into a more rigorous dialogue about gender. Even if we leave aside the thorny issue of female priests, it is clear that the Church is structurally still profoundly male dominated.

There is much to be addressed, including how the theory of “complementarity” may serve to entrench archaic gender roles, and how its language tends to reduce the role of women primarily to that of wifehood.

But its own limitations must not disqualify or discourage the Church from emphatically condemning the resurgence of misogyny and insisting on gender equality in all spheres of society.

These are not radical propositions. The equality of human dignity is a non-negotiable Gospel demand.

Even as we Catholics reject certain dominant streams within the women’s movement—especially in terms of reproductive rights—we must embrace it.

As Pope Francis puts it in Amoris Laetitia: “If certain forms of feminism have arisen which we must consider inadequate, we must nonetheless see in the women’s movement the working of the Spirit for a clearer recognition of the dignity and rights of women.”