hart anderson i'm a senior minister at westminster predatory church and moderator of this event it is my pleasure to introduce tonight's guest speaker sister joan chittister is widely recognized as one of the most influential religious leaders and social analysts of our time she's a member of the benedictine sisters of erie pennsylvania and the founder and executive director of bennett asian a resource and research center for contemp she's the author of more than forty books on religion spirituality peace making and social justice and she writes a regular column from where i stand for the national catholic reporter she currently serves as the co chair of the global peace initiative of women a partner organization of the united nations which facilitates a worldwide network of women peace builders she served as president of the leadership conference of women religious and was part of the interfaith council convened by theologian karen armstrong to draft the charter for compassion which was disseminated worldwide her topic tonight is american women and the women of the world no woman left behind ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming sister joan  now you know i admire you so much for treating me really treat this topic tonight this forum on the road and place of women both in america and around the world is an important event i beg you to believe that all of us both women and men this is not a woman's issue this is a human issue in addition to that it's a true test the fact is that the importance of this subject f boundaries of this place in our homes in our private lives and it is meant to offer some fresh perspective on attitudes that linger toward women and it tells us the truth and the reality of what we ourselves say about our own commitment to equality and justice and human development the question tonight is simply whether we ourselves really grasp its importan and so are determined to make it significant for others as well as i prepared this presentation i found myself coming back again and again and to other stories that confirm i think these values the has to have no burden to carry at all that answer comes out of the way though of a woman who knows what it is  suffer under a system which she herself has had no opportunity no right to rephrase or reshape to her own values or vision the second story comes from the soup once absolutely sir the old woman said lady the merchant probably that is the most beautiful run that i have seen any place in the entire medle if you know how beautiful your rug is why in the name of them are you selling it for only one hundred were big and then the old woman thought and there was a sad and shocking look on her face because she said to him until this moment i never knew there were any numbers above a hundred it's a tragedy to do an entire class of people to lives of diminished expectations but it is immoral to condemn them to lives of unfinished possibilities yet for generations someone somewhere has decided that women need less that women deserve less and that women are worth less than the rest of the human race so as a result tonight as we sit here considering a subject quite academically women are two thirds of the illiterate of the world women are two thirds of the starving of the world and women are two thirds of the poorest of the poor everywhere that can't be an accident that's a policy and it must be changed by that other third as taher day showdown wrote once the only thing worthy of our efforts is to construct the future but on the way to the future life playschool tricks on a saw i for instance was raised by a mother who was singularly intelligent and strong her life lessons to me were very short and very clear studying germ she said and you can be anything you want to be and i believed but then i began to discover that that was everywhere a lot there's a small child i wanted to be a surgeon and then i learned that only men could be surgeons and later i wanted to be an altar server in the church and i was told that only boils could be on the altar so close to god and finally i wanted to be a writer and discovered that women writers exist of course but they were very very rare on the ground and they were very very seldom published the questions why and why not haunted me and so over the years i began an archaeological study of the woman's issue where did those ideas come from who was being and then changed by the repression of women what did science say about the subject what did churches say about he subject what did the law say about the subject in fact who was who was saying all these things and why i scoured every discipline that i could room for answers i turned over every rock and then i began to realize that everything being said about women we're all being saved by m anything written about us was written without us man i was taught were god's highest creation and we knew it was true because men  war and finally i began to explore the implications of the divine feminine the notion that woman too is made quote in the image and likeness of god i w correction i was naive enough to believe that once people understood what had happened and came to understand how we were all man as well as women or women as well as men being and state in fact even in the church as well as the space at both home and work and i was wrong i was clearly wrong at least  continuing state of women in the world today and in the united states as well is any proof at all of the fact that women are not yet really accepted as fo human beings then i would have to accept that so finally there is a third story a true story that prods me on the splendor the saddest of all the stories perhaps in this story a mother who worked at a halfway house for battered women came to me disappointed and discouraged after a presentation her young daughter she said simply rejected out of hand any of her advice on how as a woman to negotiate or just sound for herself or how to define the family role relationships between her and her fianc or listen to her counsel about how to handle abuse if she were violated physically as our courting to the government over twenty five percent of the women in the united states oh mother please ought to be really over is it now passe has it been resolved or not and if not what does that mean to you and me tonight and for the rest of our lives my suggestion is that we start by asking women themselves so let me tell you what i myself have seen or been told by women everywhere around the world or heard from u n workers in the field for instance seven to forgive the atrocities committed there during the war but especially the crimes against women over seventy percent of the congolese women and girls seven out of every ten tribunal as war crimes one woman described one such as the soldiers came she said broke into the house and demanded that the man turn over his wife and daughters to them or be himself he refused so they helped the husband down they cut off his fingers one of the time and they stabbed him repeatedly his missed by his suffering she couldn't stand it any longer and she begged them to let him go and take her instead so they did they gang right her and her daughters in front of her husband and sons they were of the house and they left and when the raping robbers left  loaded in anger at her and demanded that she and the girls leave the house immediately and never returned in fact that  woman is wandering homeless cannot as we consider her own situation that response of the husbands was they told us all response so come that now most of the women of the congo are still homeless alone and abandoned by families and husbands everywhere the international delegates like you with this moment were wor culture that values family so much and in a situation where so many women were laying down their own lives daily to say both their husbands and their daughters well first one of the congolese women explained to us quietly they have not come to understand that women are really hum and then she went on quite cryptically you see men have to believe men have to believe believe that women don't want women who take contraceptives slots  for prostitutes who simply want the right to have sex without responsibility and those men keep their jobs and their professional reputation while the woman struggles to regain her clearly the notion that women want is still a commonplace on which judgments are made and laws are written and and and people's lives or shape clearly a woman's emotional maturity and rational development are still only grudgingly conceded and we do not know what our boys are being taught in this culture yet or let those who think that feminism is overcome with be to mexico in morocco in mexico martin i have a picture in my own one lives a little shack on the side of a running river with  children and an old sewing machine she's one of what mexico calls look across a cheap canvas one of the little love ness where she hopes for a few patients a week from the man who comes and gets bored there's no legal protection for it or from it and there's no financial support required it simply they tell us something of the international workers towers only the gradual amounts of patience of women and its effect on women's education will make it possible for a woman ever to begin to support herself in fact the village women i also talked to at the top of the mountain told us that they would be regularly beaten for going to classes where they could learn to read and write and make products for sale and what sustains situations like these only the age old notion that a woman is meant to be attached to a man not to support themselves is that attitude over unresolved is that problem united states yet single women and their children are locked into a low wage life of discrete or poverty because a woman's place is in his her not hers clearly education is everywhere a key to independence that the work open to poor women doesn't afford in morocco article four seventy five or mor allows a rapist to avoid prosecution and prison by marrying his vector if she is a minor and to preserve the family  honor her family agrees then he's free since two thousand and six that government has promised to strike down the law but nothing has changed in march of this year twenty international pressure issued a statement saying that the relationship was consensual what they did another words were still blame the victim in the united states too isn't it blaming the victim is an indoor sport and what kind of thinking sustains a situation like this in what we like to call the civilized world simple if violence happens to you tonight it's because you were permitted it when you were when you were being you know were you drinking that you're did you go home with him in this country and we must ask what our boys are still being told clearly society's double standard for women and men is still very much and doing quite well boys will reborn is the kind of thinking at college administrative levels yet in this country that care more for winning football games than for preserving the integrity of the young women the football team syria and libya in afghanistan and iraq every day it's women and children who are left behind to die from the wounds of war as rampaging men or worse perhaps on man drones shelled their houses to dust and then leave that area to kill somewhere hours it's the women and girls who die on the streets without homes and husbands now to go back to him without food and clean water to drink without family and friends to cling to without the government support or the jobs and the money it will take to rebuild their shattered lives in the united states it is war one us who are left to raise the children their husbands leave behind in houses now that they can no longer pay for with jobs that pay them less than their male counterparts thanks when the husband returns from war also jobless if they protest the inequality in wages or the lack of employment and promotion opportunities left for women for a woman who is now the sole support of her family's if they if they protest the lack of what it takes to do it the final indignity must surely be to have other women young women who have yet to face but closed doors of the corporate world that doles out on fair wages to women to criticize as passing feminist foolishness their struggles to be heard and to be treated as fully human and clearly worse is the fact that in modern warfare were weapons of mass destruction shown no favor between the warriors and the order pawn there is no such thing as non combat times and women and children everywhere in this world not soldiers are now as a result over ninety percent so the last generations problem known as the cries of women who are still struggling against discrimination in the market place go on her the attitude of women who have jobs for those who don't or who must work two jobs without benefits to get one full jobs pay is the very attitude that has always sustained racism and poverty as well i if they just work harder we were told they can't get ahead i did despite the fact that the ceiling on wages and promotions is immoral but not yet illegal clearly sexism in the workplace is a given until women are as concerned about other women's jobs as they are about their own their own are eternally in jeopardy in twenty eight countries of the the execution of a woman's general talia to control a woman's ready sexual drive and increase her husband's sexual pleasure and guaranteed her sexual before marriage the world health organization says the side effects of of this barbaric practice seem cool so their pain abscess hemorrhage infection infertility incontinence and we dotted psychological and sexual problems but those who advocated and there are many say the years of divine mandate because the sexual satisfaction of the husband is god's will for women of the oh no where no where in any basic religious document is that written in any tradition a woman's body in other words is shaped by man's interest in the united states the diet industry the clothing industry the cosmetic industry a large part of the body building industry and a large part of elective plastic surgery does the same and our girls are being disfigured or die too some of our brightest women have already gone that way like kar this country yes in practice here and the women activists are making an attempt to have that change it has never been picked up by anybody in the senate or congress when did you write your last postcard about surely no religious moral or cultural argument is ever more if it endangers human rights and for physical development if it blocks a woman's moral agency or denies her the fullness of her humanity if it ignores the free consent of the woman whose life will be forever changed by that is as norway's ambassador to the united nations says the real moral hazard of our time clearly the sexualization of women is the fundamental comprise more than fifty percent of the agricultural workforce in the world badly in need of food for the nine hundred twenty five million undernourished poor of the world are on able to produce it of the agricultural work of the country but they own less than ten percent of the farm land so they can't grow more crops or grow more income in south east asian women are respond responsible for ninety percent of the rice production but in india naipaul and thailand they own less than ten percent of the land in the middle a woman s all her lifestyle if her husband dies yes gender bias in other words is condemning millions of boys and girls to grow up with all the physical and mental stunting that implies gender equity in this room alone could reduce malnourishment for a minimum of one hundred fifty million people a year the attitude that undergirds situations like this is simple and straightforward business is not a woman's work men do those things men control those things and men profit from those things in the united states the lack of gender equity is cleverly masked however women are hired but not promoted women are ninety percent of the teachers for the only ten percent of the principles and function of corporate leaders women are paid of course but not fully and every arena women are still paid eighteen to twenty five percent less than a man for the very same or women are promoted married to the professions now yes but only rarely to executive boards or top management positions or political offices and then  never equal numbers who's running your hospitals who's running your government who's running your colleges who's running any of your institutions who's running the banks who's running the stock exchange a woman or two here or there it's  an organizational policy called add women and start gender equity is the ball of gender equality all the patronizing words in the world do not change the value of a woman's paycheck despite the fact that a single mother pays exactly the same amount of money for a loaf of bread or a tank of gas or heat for the house or a trip to the doctor's office as any man dies clearly it's women not men see on paid work is carrying the world on their economic shoulders according to the world economic forum of twenty twelve listen carefully of the top twenty countries on the planet considered best for women measured by the metrics of health and wellness education political empowerment and economic participation the united so how do we know when we're for easy i got away we all know we all know that we're finally equal when our klutzes are promoted to high paid executive position and yet the statistics are clear companies that strike a gender balance all the way up to the management levels do better financially than those that don't check the figures but we won't get there unless this generation of women you refuse to be fooled into thinking that the woman's question is dead and refuse to allow the questions of women's human rights to d lack of access to clean water affects everyone of course but their affection girls most of all and it gets the least attention from policymakers and politicians in mexico water is a feminist agenda but coca cola and the fam to trucks get to the top of the mountain weekly but no water truck ever nor does the government run water pipes up there it's too expensive to do that they say and anyway they explained to us they don't need water pipes because of a damp and women to do that  and the other women of the mountain village we were in rise before dawn there they walked miles up the mountain to the nearest well they carry ten gallons of water home on their shoulders to do the cooking and the laundry and the personal hygiene for the day and then in the afternoon they do it all over for supper and bathing that night day after day after day twenty gallons of carrying a day from childhood to death every day of their lives no wonder they're dying so young what laundry and that is woman's work in the united states both men and women work but far too often yet when she gets home she still has to cook the dinner and pick up the house and do the laundry and make the beds and pack the school lunches for the next day alone which is why feminists say it's the housework stupid so that their daughters may someday live a more balanced more equal life clearly the notion of woman as domestic servant is yet a universal expectation or universal reality when male workers demanded secretarial pools and parking spots sick days and paid vacation time workers argued and owners agree that these facilities were essential to the productivity of the worker and to the quality of the work but when women ask companies to provide day care centers on site they're told that child care has nothing to do with our business or the work environment or the quality of work the woman does so as a result the cost of childcare either prohibits a woman from entering the workforce at all or it eats up whatever profits she might make by doing it and we want our time i sit around and wonder why poor women stayed poor and of regime rather than public service stations are a woman's job and men live distanced from the home and marriages fail clearly the controlling other two here as in every other case is that women are caretakers but men are the authority the leaders the controllers and the public intellectuals of the world when an intelligent woman figures these things out brutally apparent in other countries perhaps cleverly masked here then suddenly she realizes the feminist agenda so i definitely no longer pass when children were being impressed into road militias in the least seven countries uganda the d d r say sudan shared can deliver a libya rather and the ivory coast both boys and girls impressed and in the service under the age of fifteen the boys were trained to rape and the girls were used as sex slaves to satisfy the soldiers themselves but women lawyers pressing case told me the sex crimes against girls soldiers were not even included in the statement of war crimes let alone heard in court later one case one case pressed by these women lawyers for over five years from two thousand and six to two thousand and eleven has been heard by the international criminal court and finally prosecuted  of girl children have been the court records say quote right used as sex slaves become pregnant had unwanted children were made to sleep with their commanders and do household chores and then were used as well and come that close quote in the united states of america women and girls kidnapped or pamela's bought and sold are trafficked from one state to another from a foreign country to this one in overwhelming numbers here now still the united nations educational scientific and cultural organization reports that trafficking to and i am a million human beings across borders year three is the new slavery over twenty thousand women and girls a year are brought to the united states under pretense of good employment which turns into sex work without any pay at all trapped there here trapped without money without papers or passports they're controlled by drugs and beatings and confinement some of them as young as twelve sleep with eight to ten men night they live in dingy walk up rooms on the streets of new york and los angeles they're isolated they're beaten they're controlled by pimps but the united states has yet in this country in the face of all of our language about equality and justice don't ever again ever allow anyone in your presence to call prostitution a woman's oldest profession it is not and it never has been a woman's profession prostitution is the only profession men allowed women to handle in the early history and is still of male profession put men profit from it and men take pleasure clearly when the buying and selling of women for sexual services is finally stopped by the men of this world when domestic violence is seen as the sin the an overrated civilization a disease of human under development that is sustained by the attitude that sex is all that a woman is really in afghanistan male  that the government really institute restrictive measures on the lives of women that will segregate the sexes and bar women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative in a traffic jam in egypt two months ago i looked out of both a bus window on the on the cars coming by us on both sides i saw only one woman driver in the whole women there are outraged at the rising return to restrictions by religious leaders but the truth is that women of all faiths and churches and mosques are temples everywhere are subject to the religious definitions and prescriptions and segregation of men and women in holy places they're  thank are denied access yet to the forums where theological dictums are written that affect their lives they're excluded even from the language of the faith where god is male and women are invisible they're denied access to the central mysteries of their religion and the attitudes that's a saying such things is a clear but increasingly suspect one it's because gawd once said that  look that kind of theology makes god that's a sad situation indeed with the words let us make them in our own image male and female let us make them ringing in your ears when even the soul of a woman is controlled by man it's tragic when the bodies of women are controlled by men it's unconscionable when the development of theology is denied the spiritual insights of women and women are denied the fullness of the  heresy at the ultimate level and it is as fresh as yesterday inspection indeed the underlying attitudes that bind the women of the world everywhere to female servitude are chilling there are eleven of them man or woman is uncontrollably sexual a woman's purpose is to serve men a woman who's assaulted has asked for it a woman is equal but she just doesn't work hard enough or isn't smart enough to merit recognition and childbearing and sexual satisfaction of a husband or god's only real will for women in the public arena is the male his housework is woman's work women are caretakers men are leaders a woman is worthless for anything but sex and most of all god wants it that's wh the list is discouraging yes it's depressing yes it's disgraceful yes but it is your final only you can make it fine it is not fatal it's simply depends on  you know these women and if you don't know these women and ask yourself why it is that no one that these women were important enough to teach you about when mother jones decided to stop  allies pray for the dead and fight like hell when rachel carson wanted the exploitation of nature to stop she wrote her brown breaking book silence frame and became a what we now call the us environmental movement when lillian smith a southern white woman wanted to stop racism she challenged local segregationist by organizing most racial gatherings of artists and thinkers and the center of the south elizabeth blackwell was refused admission the medical schools everywhere so she studied medicine under the guidance of a private tutor and was eventually certified by a very small in conspicuous medical school in geneva new york however when no hospital anywhere would hire her she and her blood sister began a clinic in the slums of new york city which became the first medical college for women though we did not have a woman doctor in my hometown for another hundred years rose snyderman was a key figure in demanding such reforms as the eight hour  day and the minimum wage she changed life for every woman and every man in this room one way or another were restocks opening one's first birth control clinic in one thousand twenty one against the list is endless mary just saw grace the stature of female artist nellie bly was one of the first quarter girl reporters in the united states and she took on such a volatile subjects as the problems of working women and death her death unmasked burmese oppression there is a brave trial lying tonight with a shot in her head for insisting on the education girls in pakistan and there are the sisters of the leadership conference minister their own organization articulate their own ideas and pursue their own questions without male permission very these women refused to take no for an answer and by doing that made it possible for other women never to hear no again about their own place and agency in the issues of the time they refused to si their humanity and so made the fullness of your humanity and mine possible they did not say when they themselves reached the pinnacle of their own aspirations feminism is over now so passe  it's dangerous it's the start of their lives say to us go on you know you go on yes yes go to the stars go to the peak of your personal possibilities but do not under any conditions fail to take other women with you and never ever did right or drain their own attempts do not fail to listen to their needs do not fail to understand that their needs are still your needs as long as one woman is still the ninety excluded and unheard by any system by any institution by whatever theologies of domination because she is a woman we are all  priced and our daughter she wherever they are whatever country they're in tonight whatever they seem to be but are denied or not free will never be free without you indeed no feminism is not passe the only question now for our own time is are we will not only to its present demands but to the women who went before us who made the world we live in who left office with a better world who never felt for a moment that because oppression was over for them that it was over for every woman everywhere and so they spent their lives to make  the purpose of life is not to be happy the purpose of life is to matter to have it make a difference that you've lived of all entire day showdown writes the only task worthy of our efforts is to construct the future that's why this subject this forum this night and all nights like it are so important to every woman and every man in this hall to every young man and woman everywhere it's a sign symbol not only of what can be but of what must be if we are all to be fully human human beings together remember different time changes nothing it's our time for the sake of our daughters for the sake of the world we must each do something to make a better future to make a difference for women everywhere so that all of us can become what we are truly presbyterian church and moderator of this forum with sister joan chittister well the answer is quite questions from the house audience but i'd like to invite the radio audience to join us for a post here lection forum on thursday november twenty ninth at noon when political strategist strategist donna brazil will discuss the recent election and the challenges facing our next president and now sister joan chittister if you will return to the p washable as long as worse we're speaking about the election there american magazine america magazine recently asked the two catholic vice presidential candidates a question that perhaps you would can we make the most impact for equality and justice what groups are making a difference in my opinion every group makes a difference and i don't prioritize them and i don't care how large they are or how small they are i'm just  you to find your interest follow your interest discover how it affects women and through that group who have the organization and a voice in the public arena to respond to that maybe through education and maybe through environment women are suffering terribly from a lack of environmental protection you heard that tonight surely there are obviously women's groups and that should be supported i certainly support from at the same time i'm looking for termites who will invest in every other g them what they're doing to bring women before stature and independence and education in this country which country or countries has or have the best living conditions for women is denmark not near the top and ye gender and yes iceland finland norway sweden ireland is fair new zealand denmark the philippines and austria all rank ahead of us did you mention the united states in that list no i didn't talk and we're twenty seconds you tell us something about your work with the global peace initiative of women yes the global peace initiative of women came out of the millennium summit to end two thousand and one it's a very interesting personal kind of story  the then general secretary of the united nations recognized that everybody had he had the vision to recognize that if we were going to have a different millennium next time around that religious figures and religious leaders had to commit to that out so he had a religious summit and noticed that the women noticed that i think there were less than one hundred women in two thousand men and women who are carrying all these institutions on their backs who do all the houses of it and take care of all the sick and and handle all the chance for reason and deal with with all the churches they were there so he was he was very concerned about that good honest man and he set about creating a woman so much that we held in switzerland in geneva and at the end of that summit the women created the women's global peace initiative and it was set up around the figures whose faces were known in their own denominations and we had a buddhist nun and  what we decided to do was to go into areas of tension or great deprivation and bring people together around these subjects we are now kind of morphing into the creation of another group calling for the voice of contemplative this you know people are funny people look at religion they they look at your ties and they say well as god sees the world you are meant to be as contemplative as i am otherwise who was jesus walking from galilee to jerusalem stopping at every pain in the in the entire area and changing that pain saving them pam praising the person so what we're doing now is asking contemplatives to really very voices and tell us tell the rest of oldest religious order in the catholic church there's no institution older of the catholic church than the church itself and so we have we have weathered every change in the only in the west for over fifteen hundred years we are not going down on this how to live an ordinary life extraordinarily well the rule of benedict the benedict thems i have no particular ministry i you know you can look at some religious orders and say well they're a nurse in order or you look at their teaching order spirituality the spirituality of the twenty first century because it's concentration is on things like community and peace and justice and hospitality and and the human dimension of life if we don't get back to those there's not going to be much life left for any o minnesota is one of the top states for human trafficking maybe this audience does not realize that tonight will inspire minnesota women to become involved with this issue thank you for your commitment and energy of women to be here t