The Vatican seems to be going through some tough waters; last weekend's article in the Vatican paper, Osservatore Romano, honoring International Women's Day is a vivid example. The headline: "The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax".
The message: what has really changed women's lives is household technology, not rights or pills or work or the vote. The humorists are having a ball. Let's count among them Rush Limbaugh, whose rambling, sarcastic commentary deserves to be recounted in full (his mock outrage will not do a lot to solve the gender gap he's been complaining about.)
"This continual playing to stereotypes must stop. It must be challenged, and it must be swept aside. Women face enough tough decisions each and every day particularly during this recession. We all know that during economic downturns women and minorities are hardest hit, and it's no different now. And in this time of economic challenge, downturn, hopelessness, where is the next car coming from, the next job for the husband...? The husband! Where is the husband coming in? Where is the next man coming from? To sit here and pretend that you are a comedian and to say that the washing machine was more liberating than the pill according to the Catholic church, this has gone far enough. Besides, everybody knows it was the vacuum cleaner that liberated women more than the pill."
To be fair, the Osservatore Romano article was written by a woman, and technology does offer many gifts. Women's lives, even more than men's, were filled with drudgery in the past. Technology, including vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and pills, has changed all our lives. And there's another aspect of the article that deserves support -- it put the spotlight on the large role that domestic work still plays in women's lives. There's a wonderful irony in the term economists use for the women who perform the repetitive work that is rarely captured in economic statistics: "The reproductive sector". I think of that as I unload the dishwasher for the umpteenth time. The routines have changed from the days of the mangle and wood stove, but the work is still very much with us.
The Vatican article hit many raw nerves, especially coming in the same week as the excommunication in Brazil of the doctors who performed an abortion on a nine-year-old who had been raped and was pregnant with twins. (Doctors feared the child's life would be put in danger if she had to give birth.)
The washing machine piece comes across as a ploy to deflect attention from the controversies around Catholic Church policies on contraception and abortion. And it downplays the topic that was at the forefront of women's day events this year. As United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reminded us, "In some countries, as many as one in three women will be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Women and girls are also systematically and deliberately subject to rape and sexual violence in war."
What's needed is a healthy and open debate, within the Catholic world and beyond, of the warring values that arise in debates about women's rights. What does respect for life and dignity, a wonderful clarion call, truly mean? How can we work for dignity and life for all women? Maybe washing machines are part of the story, but they are hardly a true reflection of what women's rights are about.
