News
The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the International Alliance of Women (IAW) recently organized a guest lecture and panel discussion on “Women in Top Leadership and Decision-Making Positions.”
The guest speaker, Torild Skard, reviewed 70 years of struggle for women’s rights and highlighted how little has changed since 1945, when the Charter of the United Nations recognized equal rights of men and women. “The rhetoric developed over time to become more and more ambitious but what about the reality,” Skard said.
Esther Alder, administrative adviser for the City of Geneva, shared a similar a view by expressing that women still needed to fight for gender justice in Swiss politics. “Politics is still a male area, a lot of energy, perseverance, commitment and work is needed to survive,” Alder reflected.
Skard stressed how people with power use dominance techniques to maintain their position: withholding information, ridiculing, using and threatening violence, are only a few tactics to discriminate women. “A man is forceful and a woman is pushy,” Skard said.
Looking toward a better future for women’s rights, Skard called for the collaboration of women with women and men with women. “Both men and women must act to promote gender equality, particularly in leadership positions. Women’s rights champions and organizations and women’s networks are essential,” Skard said.
Dr Fulata Moyo, WCC programme executive for Just Community of Women and Men, looked at the role of women in religion and advocated for “a continued feminist discourse on religion; feminist theology and how to articulate faith and feminism, faith and women’s rights and gender justice,” Moyo said.
Sara Llot, interim general secretary of the YWCA, emphasized the danger of “self-barriers” on top of “external barriers,” explaining that “women exclude themselves from networks.”
“Gender justice has been an important part of the work of WCC since its inception. In WCC, we are working really hard to ensure that gender justice becomes a reality,” said WCC associate general secretary Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the WCC.
