EQUALITY AND COMPLEMENTARITY BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

VATICAN CITY, MAR 9, 2007 (VIS) - Yesterday, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York, delivered an address to the 61st session of the UN General Assembly in the context of the "Informal Thematic Debate on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women."

  Speaking English, Archbishop Migliore stated that "the legitimate quest for equality between men and women has achieved positive results in the area of equality of rights. This quest needs to be accompanied by the awareness that equality goes hand in hand with and does not endanger, much less contradict, the recognition of both the difference and complementarity between men and women. Without this recognition the struggle for equality would not be authentic."

  "Physical difference [between men and women] is often minimized," he said, "while the purely cultural dimension is maximized and held to be primary. This blurring of differences has an impact on the stability of society and of families and, not least, on the quality of the relations between men and women. Equality between women and men and the empowerment of women will be attained when the differences of the sexes are recognized and highlighted as complementary and the cultural element of gender is understood in its proper context."

  Empowerment of women also means "addressing discriminatory practices that exclude women from decision-making processes, often caused or aggravated by discrimination based on a woman's race, ethnicity, religion or social status."

  The archbishop highlighted the importance of microfinance projects in the empowerment of women, recalling in this context how the Catholic Relief Services agency "operates in 99 countries from all continents," and currently has programs "operational in at least thirty countries, with more than 850,000 clients, of whom almost 75 percent are women."

  "Studies have shown how microfinance has led to a wide-ranging improvement of the status of women, from earning greater respect from men to being acknowledged as important contributors to society."

  Archbishop Migliore concluded by pointing out that education "remains the most vital tool in the promotion of equality between men and women and in the empowerment of women to contribute fully to society."
DELSS/WOMEN/UN:MIGLIORE                    VIS 20070309 (370)