Pour La Dignité de la Femme

I. Partnership: a matter of heart and trust

The biological aspect

We have to accept that this is determined: mother-and fatherhood cannot be changed.

The masculin principle:

§  Men want to conquer.

§  Men are like wild horses: they have to be tamed and harnessed.

The female principle:

§  Women want to be conquered.

§  They want to care and to be cared for.

In their effort of emancipation and breaking with narrow role restrictions, they tried to negate sex-specific characteristics between men and women as to be only matter of education: "we are not born as women – we are made to"

Intimacy

When a man and a woman come together, they leave themselves to the mercy of each other.

Their deep fundamental needs are:

§  Respect: each wants to be respected the way they are.

§  Security: to be able to rely on each other.

§  Solidarity: to care one for the other.

§  Mutual understanding for their sex-specific and personal individualities.

Their common way of life includes:

§  Love and joy

§  Family and children

§  Individual and common goals

§  Society involvement

§  To cope with destiny and disappointments

§  To help each other to become better human beings

Service and the question of power

Is service feminine? Is power masculine?

Service: a matter of need and honour

The only authorisation of power is to serve.

The movement of emancipation

Through the movement of emancipation women went against masculine abuse of power and they managed to cause great changes in the society. Women were very successful, but also made mistakes: the so-called "sexual revolution" did not bring us more satisfactory relations, but contributed to a moral decline. The professional work brought us more independence but also a multiple-task life which made it more difficult to cope with family life.

Men feel to be "out"

There are positive developments in the spirit of partnership between men and women, but some men feel very uncertain. They try to retire from their responsibility to the family. Some emancipated women transport the message "I don't need you." Men suffer from not being needed and from being excluded. It is as if frustrated women took revenge on frustrated men.

Children need fathers

§  The mother cannot replace the father or the other way round.

§  Nowadays we often experience a lack of paternity in education.

§  There are too many single mothers.

§  The masculine example is missing for the identification of children, especially for boys.

§  More than mothers, fathers stand for structure, discipline, determination, effort and endurance. They are less empathic than mothers and they are more demanding – just the ideal completion to the qualities of mothers.

The „sexual revolution"

It did not bring us more happiness, but more problems: sexuality without love, hurt souls, high divorce-rate, many unwilling singles, numberless abortions in spite of contraception, drop of population in the industrial countries, rising problems for feminine and masculine fertility - residues of the antibaby-pill are found in the water all over the world and have negative effect on the quality of sperm.

Love without responsibility leads to egoistic and superficial relations, to more homosexuality and to sexual abuse.

Let men and women become a strong team:

§  By the principle of love and responsibility

§  By being conscious of our sex-specific strength and weaknesses as a man or a woman

§  By being of same value, but of different nature

§  Let us develop a spirit of fairness and partnership,

§  of cooperation instead of competition

§  by completing and learning from each other

§  Let us appreciate, encourage, and forgive each other

§  And let us pray for each other every day, so that

§  The family shall become a place of love, care and understanding. It shall be a secure place for growth and personal development, conflict resolution and social learning.

§  As parents let us also be conscious of our example and our leadership qualities.

II. Let us transform the economical crisis into a chance!

Starting in the period of enlightenment, men developed the illusion, that scientifical and technical progress will enable us to understand and dominate the earth.

Masculine principles have ruled the earth: conquest, competition, unlimited growth. Everything must increase, always become better and faster. Nature became dominated and exploited more and more. Men are exploiting men.

At the end of this development, the neo-liberal economical system has lead humanity into a fundamental crisis. We are standing in front of the ruins of an artificial construction. The Western world itself is now concerned. Previously it was "only" the Third World. The following facts were hardly recognized, although it is a big shame and scandal: Several times the United Nations (Jean Ziegler) pointed out that every 5 seconds a child was starving. That makes about 6.300.000 victims a year. This is as much as we had victims in the 2^nd World war in 6 years altogether. Every year we have a world war with the weapons of injustice and hunger. At present the situation is likely to be even worse. The U.N. said some 180 billions of Dollars would be needed to fight against hunger. But the civilized world did not afford this sum.

In autumn 2008 the financial world broke down, causing the present breakdown of our neo-liberal economy. More than 1000 billions of Dollars were spent to avoid a breakdown of unimaginable consequences. If this money is being used to restore the old capitalist system, then the big catastrophe is only postponed.

We don't need feminine emancipation serving the old masculine economic principles of product and profit maximization. It divides people into

§  Those who have a job: they suffer from stress and burnout

§  Those who have no job: are left at the social margin, threatened by depression, drug addiction and criminal careers. Only a few idealistic people manage to help themselves.

§  There are big differences of income, hopelessness, despair and social explosive.

What we need is a change of paradigm.

The feminine economics – the so called CARE economics

Its aim is justice of distribution and sustainable development, responsible to the future generations. The economical motivation is "good life" which is not identical with the production of more and more articles, but its goals are satisfactory relations to us, to others and to the nature.

Human work should be

§  experienced as to be full of sense

§  conform to natural rhythm

§  meet the human needs and care for just repartition

§  guarantee sustainability

§  Consumption should be consciously self restrictive and emancipated from the force of consumption.

What we need is a moral economy

§  Of mutual assistance

§  Moderate and fair competition with fair rules

§  We need redistribution between productive and reproductive work, ownership, fortune and access to resources.

§  A compensation between paid and unpaid work (which is being done to 80% by women)

§  Recognition and remuneration of work for the family, raising children, caring for sick, handicapped and old people, social, cultural and peace creating work

§  A system to share work and money = reduce working times and allow more people to work. Women and men should have more time for family life and culture.

§  In every concern there should be a balance between taking and giving.

§  We need true justice and development efforts for poor countries.

We have to create political, economical and social systems that make us become true brothers and sisters who care for each other and who care for our beautiful world. The feminine contribution to this vision is of premium importance.

Somebody told me: "In my work I can be replaced – but not in my family."