The Gains of Women In Society
‘The hour is coming, in fact it has come, when the vocation of women is being fully recognised, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never previously achieved.’
The words above are not recent. In fact, they are almost 60 years old. And they come not from some feminist radical or a secular liberal politician but from Pope Paul VI, who steered the Church through the Second Vatican Council.
In August, as we celebrate the role of women in South Africa, it is good to reflect on these words. How prescient was Pope Paul?
In terms of wider society, he was exactly on the nose. The role of women in public roles has been transformed in almost every country. Developments towards gender equality, like so many other forms of equality, were delayed in South Africa until the 1990s, but we have now caught up with much of the rest of the world. There seem to be almost no areas left where women are not making a leadership contribution on a par with men.
That reality might seem so commonplace now as to be obvious. Try suggesting to the confident young women emerging from our schools today that they may be nurses but not doctors, teachers but not principals, secretaries but not CEOs, and they would rightly be baffled. The change has been so widespread that we can easily forget that it was only one or two generations ago that certain professions were regarded as closed to women.
If you think all this is ancient history, let me share a story with you. I was at Holy Family College in Durban recently with Mark Campbell, head of the KZN Catholic Schools Office. He proudly pointed to the board which listed alumni who had been awarded degrees. The first name was Mark’s own grandmother, Angela Lander, who was part of the very first class at the University of Natal that allowed women to study commerce. The gains made by women are within living memory.
Hard-won gains
But ask any woman of an earlier generation and they will tell you that these gains were not easily won. In every single profession and at every rung of leadership once dominated by men, men have fought deeply and often bitterly to defend their bastions of privilege. That is hardly surprising. The response is no different when it is the assumed privilege of skin colour or age or tribe that is challenged.
Once allowed into these professions, we have seen women persistently match and often exceed the standards set by men. Perhaps the reason why men resisted admitting women was not (as they claimed) because women could not do the job well, but because men couldn’t do it well and didn’t want to be shown up!
Of course, not all the glass ceilings in public life have been shattered. There have been female elected heads of government not only in “liberal” countries like the UK, Germany and New Zealand but also more conservative ones like Pakistan, India, Israel, DR Congo and Liberia. Yet, 30 years after liberation, South Africa is no closer to placing a woman at the top of government. In fact, there was only one woman party leader among the top 15 parties in our recent elections.
Woman leaders in Church
In that regard, we must also consider the leadership role of women in the Catholic Church. I do not want to say the “lack of leadership” because women do take leadership roles in so many ways in the Church.
The cover of this magazine pictures Sr Dominica Mkhize FSF, a woman who is the associate secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC). The all-male bishops’ conference of our region has a good record of appointing women to its secretariat, starting in the 1980s with Holy Family Sister Brigid Flanagan.
Precious Blood Sister Hermenegild Makoro even served nine years as the SACBC’s secretary-general, one of the very few women — indeed, one of the very few non-priests — to perform that role in the whole Catholic world.
However, in reality — apart from in our schools — it is still very rare for women in the Church, religious or lay women, to hold positions of authority. That is partly because we so often still persist in the belief that the grace of ordination not only makes a man a priest but also endows him with skills in leadership, financial management, discernment, administration and IT that he had never shown before he was ordained.
For as long as we assume that priests can lead us in everything, we will fail to access the leadership skills of women in the Church (and indeed the vast majority of men). So in the meantime women work diligently and usually quietly leading NGOs, small communities, sacramental preparation programmes, outreach projects and spirituality centres — sometimes recognised by their priest and their community, often not.
The problem of invisibility is one with which we should be familiar in South Africa. When political leaders of colour won positions of authority in our first inclusive elections 30 years ago, they did not appear from thin air — there had always been black and brown leaders in our society, they were just not always recognised. For many white people raised in a segregated society, it took a leap of imagination to accept black and brown people as leaders.
A bishop and a mother
The same has happened as women have taken formal leadership positions across society, and also in Christian traditions other than ours. And we are beginning to see, slowly, that leap of the imagination being made by Catholic men as well.
Pope Francis is good at helping people make those leaps. A few months ago, he invited to an informal teatime seminar an Anglican bishop who happens to be a woman. Suddenly, the assembled cardinals were faced not with the theory of a woman bishop but the actual presence of one. I had the honour of meeting the Rt Rev Jo Bailey Wells in London recently (her husband is rector of St Martin in the Fields church, which recently held a service honouring Archbishop Denis Hurley alongside St Oscar Romero).
What astonished the cardinals most, she said, was not that she is a woman but that she is a mother. Despite a deep appreciation of Mary as Mother of the Church, they found it hard to imagine how someone who is a real mother could also be a pastoral mother to a diocese.
On returning from Vatican II — perhaps with Paul VI’s words quoted above ringing in his ears — Archbishop Hurley committed himself to empowering women in his archdiocese.
A few months before his retirement after serving Durban as its ordinary for 45 years, Hurley in a newspaper interview commented that he had “great difficulty in seeing what problem there is in ordaining women”. I could not possibly comment on that subject since Pope John Paul II has forbidden all of us from discussing women’s ordination.
But Paul VI could foresee “the influence, effect and power” that women would have in society. What holds us back from imagining the same in our own Church?
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