New York (AsiaNews/CWN) - The president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences has called for a worldwide mobilization of public opinion, particularly in the wealthy countries, to raise the status of women. Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor representing the Vatican, spoke on March 7 at a UN conference appraising the results of the 1995 Beijing Conference on women. While there has been progress in some areas regarding the condition of women, she said, many women still suffer "new forms of poverty" and "new threats to human life and dignity."

Glendon noted that three-fourths of the people living in poverty around the world are woman and children. In the developing world, millions of women and children lack adequate food, housing, and health care. Even in affluent societies, she continued, the "feminization of poverty" has become a much-noted phenomenon. With the collapse of families in the Western world, the costs of broken families fall disproportionately on women and children.

The suffering of needy women is a scandal, Glendon continued, because today the world has sufficient means to eliminate hunger and poverty. What is required, she said, is a firm commitment to take action, going beyond "empty promises," and "a vast moral mobilization of public opinion, especially in those countries enjoying a sufficient or even prosperous standard of living."

The Catholic Church, the Harvard scholar remarked, has consistently argued that the best means of helping women to escape poverty is education-- an approach that won strong endorsement by UN officials at the Beijing conference. But progress on that front has been slow, she reported.

Mary Ann Glendon, who was part of the Holy See's delegation to the Beijing Conference in 1995, was named president of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences in march 2004 by Pope John Paul II. She is the first woman to serve as president of any pontifical academy.

• vatican
• un
• catholic
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• women
• femminism
• beijing
• conference
• education
• promotion