Women's Participation in The Catholic Church
Abstract
The study provides findings on which recommendations are made for enhancing the participation of women in the Diocesan decision making structures so as to promote equitable and democratic governance. Gender roles and how they are perpetuated within the Dioceses is, to a large extent, symptomatic of a deeper problem. The majority of the respondents in the study demonstrated humble background knowledge of gender and its related discourse including mainstreaming. The Diocesan faithful; the religious and clergy are not very familiar with the national and regional and international frameworks on Gender equality and most of them do not adequately use them as reference documents to inform their actions towards gender equality.
Description
To ensure effective implementation of the Zambia National Policy on Gender, the 2008 SADC Protocol and African Union Optional Protocol on Gender and the MDG goal 3 which seeks to enhance gender equality by 2015, the Dioceses as secondary duty bearers, should promote an active and visible policy of gender mainstreaming if the Diocesan structures should have 50:50
representation in decision making structures by 2015. This requires that the Catholic Bishops should demonstrate a commitment towards gender equality by taking a key role in monitoring and assessing progress on the advancement of women. The Dioceses as secondary duty bearers should deliberately promote an active and visible policy of gender mainstreaming