The role of women in the family

By Virginia Rivero Lozada

Today I would like to comment briefly on the Holy See document known as the Instrumentum Laboris, produced by the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, held from 5 to 19 October 2014: “The pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” presented by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri on 23 June. The document is a preparatory text for the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod on the Family of 2015, to be held from 4 to 25 October under the theme “Jesus Christ reveals the mystery and vocation of the family.”

The Instrumentum Laboris offers a picture of the reality of the family in the present context and carries a deep reflection that will conclude in October, when the final document will be published once it has been submitted to the decision of the Holy Father. It is divided into three parts, each one subdivided into chapters, with an introduction and a conclusion. The first part is titled “Listening to the challenges the family faces” and has four chapters dealing with the cultural and socioeconomic context, inclusion, and affection within the family. The second part, “Discerning the family vocation,” is divided into three chapters dealing with divine pedagogy, the Church, and the path to fullness. The third part addresses “The mission of the family today” and is divided into four chapters on the new evangelization, formation, procreation, and education.

In its preparatory section, the document defines the family as “the basic unit of society, the place where one learns to live with difference and to belong to others; it is a privileged space for values such as fraternity, love, respect and solidarity between generations, where the dignity of persons is promoted, overcoming individualism and contributing to the common good of society” (30).

The family is the cradle of humanity’s most solid values for a fraternal and peaceful life built on respect for the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights. It is the cradle of life and of the future of the earth and its people. It is in the family that we learn the social virtues that shape our relationships with others and with the world. This vital nucleus of society is undergoing processes of dissolution, disintegration and loss of its fundamental mission. That situation changes human beings, the community, and the world itself. The recent encyclical Laudato si’ holds that what harms the family harms creation directly. Protecting the family, its institutional standing and its sacred character therefore also helps preserve our “common home,” which is the world. Here is a fundamental task for women to take up: to preserve life, understood as the whole of creation.

The situations the document faces directly

The Instrumentum Laboris examines the difficulties of family life in depth and states that particular attention will be given to difficult pastoral situations: single mothers, cohabitation, de facto unions, separated and divorced couples, and those who have remarried. What happens to their children? What happens to those in a canonically irregular situation, and to those who ask for marriage without being believers or practicing?

Women living these realities often carry the mistaken and unjust charge of being responsible for the breakdown of the family. The precarious and difficult situation of the family today comes from causes both inside and outside it, which the Church is studying carefully and seriously. The world has undergone dizzying changes that will not be reversed, and those changes placed women at the epicenter of family, social, economic and even political life in only a few decades. Women have had to take on multiple roles, simultaneous and parallel, that clearly affect the family and society, and that oblige us to think about these new realities with a wide view.

A decisive role, and an unequal condition

In Part 1, Chapter 3, the Instrumentum Laboris reflects on the role of women today and notes that “the processes of emancipation have highlighted their decisive role in the growth of the family and of society. Nevertheless, it remains true that the condition of women in the world is subject to great differences deriving mainly from cultural factors” (30).

It is these factors that in most cases call for change, because they perpetuate discrimination and diminish the standing and dignity of women. In developing countries such as ours, strong discriminatory elements remain in place. They bar women from productive roles and from social and political participation in order to confine them to the merely domestic and reproductive, as though combining that with the other tasks and demands today’s society places on them were impossible.

The document notes that “in Western countries the emancipation of women requires a redefinition of the tasks of spouses in their reciprocity and in their shared responsibility for family life. In developing countries, the exploitation and violence exercised on the bodies of women, and the hardship imposed on them even during pregnancy, are often compounded by forced abortions and sterilizations, along with the extremely negative consequences of practices connected with procreation (for example, surrogacy or the market in embryonic gametes)” (30).

Part 1, Chapter 3 of the Instrumentum Laboris concludes that “a greater appreciation of their responsibility in the Church can contribute to the recognition of the decisive role of women: their involvement in decision-making processes; their participation, and not only a formal one, in the governance of some institutions; their participation in the formation of ordained ministers” (30).

What falls to us

We believe these teachings encourage us to press for cultural change that strengthens the participation of women in every sphere of society, and to promote the idea that housework and the raising and education of children be taken on jointly by both parents, in communion, in fraternity, in reciprocity, with love, respect and solidarity between spouses and between generations. All of this eases and strengthens the family and the society of today, which needs the joint effort of women and men to reach the common good and social progress. The Church invites us to recognize the worth and the role of women in the family and in the world.

24 July 2015.