ABOUT WUCWO

From Camille Farell - your AMASC representative at WUCWO

What is WUCWO / UMOFC?

WUCWO and UMOFC are acronyms for WORLD UNION OF CATHOLIC WOMEN’S ORGANISATIONS.

This organisation was founded in 1910 and has 90 member organisations representing all continents. Membership is open to all Catholic women’s organisations which are recognised by national conferences of bishops and independent of party politics, and whose objects are in conformity with those of WUCWO.

AMASC became a member of WUCWO at its inception and is one of three international organisations which are members.

What does WUCWO promote?

WUCWO promotes the presence, participation and co-responsibility of Catholic women in society and the church.

If this sounds like a "motherhood" statement, then consider that when the organisation was established in 1910 it would certainly have sounded revolutionary and even today, co-responsibility of women in our church and in some areas of society is only at the early stages.

To achieve its aims WUCWO:

  1. Encourages the formation of Catholic women in order to meet contemporary challenges (through seminars, days of reflection, biblical studies).
  2. Promotes the international dimension within its member organisations. Encourages dialogue and cooperation with other faith communities and organisations.
  3. Coordinates, presents and acts upon the opinion and activities of Catholic women at an international level.

This action may take place in the forum of one of the United Nations agencies, the World Council of Europe or in the Vatican.

Every four years, an international Congress of WUCWO is held. All Catholic women are invited. In February 1996, the Congress was held in Canberra, Australia, and was an inspirational event. Watch this space for news of the next International Congress, and if it is in your region of the world: GO!

May I also recommend to you a subscription to the WUCWO Newsletter. It is published four times a year in four languages and will keep you informed and up to date. Subscriptions are US$15.00 per year, and to subscribe you can send your donation to:

WUCWO Account # 800073
WUCWO Treasurer General - Mrs Stella Bellefroid
1009 Rang Ducharmee
Pike River, Quebec
JOJ 1PO CANADA

WUCWO’s three priorities of interest during the present mandate (1996-2001) which were voted on in Canberra by 800 women are:

  1. To promote women’s assertiveness in decision-making processes in social and church activities.
  2. To register our abhorrence of and to do all we can to eliminate violence against women.
  3. To promote women’s health by education and structural improvements in society.

As your elected representative for AMASC at WUCWO, I am happy to tell you that our very active, innovative and prayerful President, Maria Eugenia Diaz de Pfennich of Mexico, is leading her executive through a process of evaluation of the work of WUCWO. We are assessing WUCWO’s image and indeed value to Catholic women and the wider world. It is a necessary appraisal at the end of the century when so much is changing so fast. The organisation is looking at its "raison d’etre". If it is to survive in the 21st century, it must find ways of improving the finances and ways of improving communication amongst us all. I believe WUCWO is a very holy and important part of our church structure. International groups of women can have a profound effect for good in the world - if we organise well and pray well.

Please contact me if you have anything you want to say about WUCWO and our place within it:

Camille Farrell
PO Box 306
Cessnock NSW 2325
AUSTRALIA

Telephone: 61 2 4991 2808
Fax: 61 2 4991 3414
Email: farre49@ibm.net



WOMEN'S HEALTH IS ONE OF THE THREE PRIORITIES OF WUCWO

A speech delivered to an international conference in Manila, Philippines by CAMILLE FARELL, our elected AMASC representative to WUCWO

The World Health Organisation has affirmed that health is a basic human right...yet the health status of millions of people in our world is deplorable.

More than half the population of the world does not have adequate health care or even adequate nutrition. It is no accident that, at the General Assembly of WUCWO (Canberra Australia 1996) 800 WOMEN CHOOSE "Women's Health" as one of three priorities for this mandate.

Catholic women have put their heads together to seek a solution. It is not feasible to leave this task to the medical sector alone. Implementing good health policies can only be achieved by national political will. We must be part of that national and international will to heal others and ourselves. To do this we must be informed and prepared to work with other good people. The World Health Organisation, a structure to which we are linked through the United Nations, has set out a number of principles for health development.

  1. That it is a responsibility of governments to ensure the health of their people.
  2. People have a legal right as well as duty to participate and take responsibility for their own health. This of course presupposes knowledge about good health and the economic independence to pursue it. It follows that it is the duty of governments and health professionals to provide the public with this information and the means to access it.

What are the particular needs of women as different from men?

In the past, people thought that the differences between men's and women's health hinged on biological differences. As a result of this attitude, women's health focused on pregnancy and childbirth. This is, of course, essential health care, but there is a great deal more to consider. From birth to old age women can be at risk simply because of their gender roles. We know that girl children are not valued in certain cultures and are often killed at birth or prenatally or allowed to die from neglect. Education is often denied to females in a family, so that they are economically dependant on their fathers, brothers and husbands and do not have the freedom, knowledge or self-esteen to seek access to health information. Poverty and women's health are directly related. Women in poverty are often undernourished, suffering from anaemia and general ill health because they choose (and society endorses their choice) to deny themselves in order to enhance the future of their children or the breadwinning male. With this background in mind, the International Conference on Nutrition in Rome in 1992 underlined an essential policy orientation that "women are inherently entitled to adequate nutrtion in their own right as individuals". It seems so obvious that we shudder at the necessity to spell it out, but women in poverty and those in a subordinate role have no decision making power and must be protected by other women and men. It is our duty as educated and independent women to look out for our less fortunate sisters. Neither is there enough action concerning reproductive health. Maternal mortality in resource poor countries is 100 times higher than in countries where women are educated and have access to resources, information and counselling in regard to family planning and reproductive health reduces the birth rate and the numbers of abortions and is essential to reduce the spread of HIV amongst women. Domestic violence and rape are of course part of the health problems of women. They not only cause physical harm but psychological trauma which reverberates throughout the family and society in general.

As women committed to change in this area, we should insist that our governments make an equitable distribution of health care services within and among countries including their preferential location where there is greatest need.

Preventive measures should be put in place to ensure good health. This means clean water, good sanitation and control of major endemic diseases. It also means we must take care that the air we breathe, the land we walk on, the sea and rivers we fish from are not contaminated by industrial waste. The environment we live in must be protected. The last 100 years has seen great advances in medical knowledge and wonderful drugs such as antibiotics but our advances will not be sufficient to promote good health if we do not take active steps to understand and protect our forests, rivers and seas. The terrible fires in our area in 1997 brought this home to us. The poisoning of the rivers in New Guinea and other places with heavy metals must be addressed not only by governments but at the grass roots level. We should all think globally but act locally. We must be informed and active in this work. God works through us...we are the hands...the spirit of GOd is our inspiration and our strength.

WHAT ACTION SHOULD WE TAKE?

Firstly we should look to our own health and that of our families. Women of my age in my society often did not give time in their youth and middle years to excercise and often totally neglected their mental health. Our daughters have seen this and, differently educated, have corrected this in their lives. We should support their efforts and even imitate them.

Secondly we should make it our business to see what is happening in the community in which we live and try to influence it for the better. In some places malnutrition means too little food, in others it means too much food or the wrong food balance. Women are in a strong position to influence change in this regard. We should see that the health authorities in our area are giving people adequate information about sexual health, nutrition, family planning and mental health and better still make it accessible to those in greatest need.

Thirdly we should lobby our governments to improve the health status of the community, and be prepared to shoulder the economic consequences. Health care costs money and those who can afford to bear the costs should not dodge the responsibilty.

Lastly we could at this Conference find a particular project to undertake. I would like to suggest that we consider the plight of the New Guinea Highlanders who are starving to death at this moment due to a bad drought. The St Vincent the Paul Society has organised donations to be dispensed via the Catholic bishops to the small communities which have a parish structure to implement the delivery of food. This is a practical way to demonstrate our good will.

Talk is cheap...action can save lives...We can do it!

Bibliography:
Anthology on Health Jacqueline Sims WHO 1994
Formulating Strategies for Health for all by the year 2000 WHO 1979
Health...A woman's issue? Dr. Ursula Hansen WUCWO Newsletter April 1997

 

The following documents are reproduced with permission from WUCWO

Empowerment of Women - Key to Development

Message from the Participants of the Regional Conference of WUCWO Europe

Do not relinquish your dreams too quickly, they are the leaven in our world for peace and justice

We have come together, enriched by our faith, our traditions and cultures, marked by our personal and national histories. We have come together as women, single and married, religious sisters, mothers, divorced, widows, young and less young, speaking in many different languages.

We have come ready to take up the challenge to work together in spite of our different outlooks - rooted very often in the different realities of our daily lives - because we believe that diversity is one of the keys to development and that the interaction of ideas is essential to empowerment. Openly and freely, we have dreamed a future for a world in which every person - each woman, each man - can live with dignity.

In the course of our work, we have become aware that old wounds were reopened for many of us. We owe it to ourselves to reflect on this with sensitivity. Just as we must not relinquish our dreams too soon, we must not look for harmony too soon or give up too easily.

But dare we take the risk of conflict? What are we afraid of?

We need to learn to accept that we have different perceptions and understanding of church; that women in our organizations live out their faith in different life choices and have varied political and social options.

We are convinced that the "good life" is only possible if we ourselves make a firm commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation - none of which can come about until women and men are really and truly equal. We know that there will be difficulties as well as opportunities but we will discern together possible paths, outline the necessary steps to be taken, create alliances, form networks so that, through our empowerment, the future, "the good life" can begin today.

Therefore we commit ourselves:

Education, formation, communication (media and new technologies) as well as networking - local, national and international, around issues of common concern - are essential tools for the achievement of our goals. However, the experience and skills acquired through our daily activities are our greatest assets as indispensable agents of sustainable development.

For our dream to become reality, we need a clear and definite personal commitment and the will to persevere in our efforts, monitoring regularly what we have achieved and what is still to be done. Otherwise our dreams will remain only dreams.

Schwarzenberg, Switzerland, September 7, 1998

Participants from: Argentina, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine.

 

WUCWO-Europe - Regional Conference, 2-7 September 1998 in Schwarzenberg
Empowerment of women - Key to Development

The topic of the WUCWO Regional Conference in Switzerland, where about 100 women will meet, calls for an agreement about our understanding of "development" and "empowerment".

I. Sustainable Development

When people talked with each other about "development" some 50 years ago, it was more or less clear to them what they meant by this. The state of development of a country could be measured by the strength of it's economy. Correspondingly, the world could be simply divided into a "First" and a "Third World", countries could be labelled as developed or underdeveloped. The industrial countries of the North were the model for the developing countries. Economic growth should be the key to development, all the other things would follow automatically.

Finally, during the seventies, people began to feel that something was not quite right with this. Not only that the gap between the rich and the poor countries became bigger - despite all the development decades. The concept of economic growth, too, became fragile. In 1972, for instance, the Club of Rome warned against the "borders of economic growth". More and more people understood that unscrupulous exploitation of nature by the industrialised countries is not a model but, quite on the contrary, a deadly threat for the future of the earth. The insight was: development can only be possible when it is ecological responsible, which means, when it does not destroy the foundation of life for generations to come.

Another insight followed. The boundary between rich and poor doesn't run between the countries and regions of the world, but within the countries themselves. A country with a strong economy is not "developed" when only a small part of the population profits, while many of them live in poverty. Development has to benefit all, which means, it has to be socially just. Especially, it must not strengthen the globally unjust distribution of power, money, work, education, etc. between men and women.

Since the "Brundtland Report"1 (1987) we speak about sustainable development to express these three aspects of development. Literally, all countries of this earth are far removed from sustainable development. Women of the South suffer from disastrous effects of a sick economy in many of their countries. Women of Middle and Eastern European countries talk about the social injustices of the "upturn" of the economy within these countries, concerning them and their families. Women of Western Europe know about the catastrophic ecological impacts of the economic system within their countries.

When we meet in Switzerland, in the sense of sustainable development, we all will come from "developing" countries.

As Catholic women's organizations, we feel responsibility for the formation of our societies. This includes especially the just distribution of the goods of this earth between young and old, women and men, children and adults, between coloured and white people, between countries and continents. This includes not to destroying God's Creation, but caring for it and preserving it for generations to come.

II. Empowerment of women

For many years it has been clear that the contribution of women for a sustainable development of societies is essential. Therefore, the Agenda 21, the Platform for Action of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio 1992), dedicated a whole chapter solely to women's role in the process of development. And the World Conference on Women of Beijing in 1995 stated that the aims of democracy, justice, peace and preservation of the creation cannot be achieved without women's participation.

Especially, women themselves all over the world recognise more and more that they need power to participate in building a better world.

"Power" - alone this word in women causes unease. Dare women want power? Isn't that unfeminine? Unchristian? Let us listen to the German philosopher of Jewish origin, Hannah Arendt, who has described power in this way: "Power is, in accordance with the human capacity, not only to act or to do something, but to unite with others and to act in agreement with them. Never a single one has power; it is in possession of a group and remains only as long as the group keeps together. When we say about somebody, she/he has power, in reality this means, that a certain number of people empowered her/ him to act in the name of them."2

Saying so, as Christian women, we see ourselves in accordance with the message of the Gospel, which promises that we as women and men participate in the creative action of God, in his power. The question is not whether to want power, but to use it "for us, women and men, and for our welfare".

Power in itself therefore is not something negative. On the contrary, to have power offers the possiblity to live something positive and - together with others - to achieve changes. Ethymologically "power" comes from the French "pouvoir" which derives from the latin "podere" meaning "be able to do something". So it would "only" be a question of doing something, even when these are very small things in the view of others - give your opinion on something, dare to say «no», or «yes», even if it frightens you.

In order to do this, women must be "empowered". They must discover their inner force (power) and develop their self-confidence. This will enable them to accept more responsibilities and to take an ever larger and more equal part in the structures of economic and political decision-making. This is what the the Platform for Action of the Beijing Conference on Women calls "empowerment".
As Catholic women's organisations we are concerned in this process of women's empowerment. All of us make women gather in groups, which understand themselves as responsible parts of church and society - whether they are living in the north, south, east or west of Europe. In many ways we strengthen, support and encourage them in their engagement for church and world. The practical problems and challenges which flow from this may be very different.

We suggest you talk with other women of your organizations or around you about how you see "Development", and how we can strengthen and encourage ("empower") ourselves and other women. It would allow us - at our Regional Conference - to learn from each other and to share the "Empowerment-experiences" and Visions of a "Good Life for All" of as many women as possible.

1 Named after the President of the World Commission of Environment and Development, the former Prime Minister of Norway and recently appointed General Director of the UN World Health Organization (WHO)

2 Arendt, Hannah, Macht und Gewalt, Munich 1995, 10th ed., p. 45.