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Seeking Full Dignity: Catholic Social Teaching and Women in the Third World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Patricia DeFerrari*
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America

Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1995

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References

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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.

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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

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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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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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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.

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