P4 Developing Gender Awareness
for Empowerment
..
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This course explores particular issues affecting women and provides the tools for developing the critical gender analysis needed to observe, evaluate, and act. Based on the work of Indian scholar Virginia Saldhana who crafted these in offering workshops for uplifting women all over India. This course allows you to explore the images of women in the media, the dignity of women, women’s bodies, violence, widowhood, women’s spirituality and more. Because these sessions were crafted for women in India, one has the benefit of gaining a close-up awareness of the joys and pains of women living within this cultural setting. The issues, however, transcend the Indian culture and bring insight and healing to women in their own native culture.
This course includes an online chatroom session of 90 minutes at the end of each week.
This course is divided into seven lessons. Each includes examining a case study, sacred texts, and interacting with other participants--all for the purpose of helping you integrate the values and skills presented in each lesson.
When you register for this course and complete the exercises for each of the seven lessons and write a final assessment paper, you will receive a certificate from our Virtual College.
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Why do families fail to celebrate the birth of a daughter? |
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How do the popular images of women shape our vision of ourselves? |
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3. Dealing with sexual harassment How are girls and woman impacted by the various forms of sexual harassment that are considered normative in our society? |
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4. Women functioning in the churches How are women's gifts often undervalued or ignored in the Christian churches? |
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5. Positive perspectives on widowhood Can a woman find her positive functioning independent of her former husband? |
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6. Menopause--A period of growth in wisdom When motherhood is so highly valued, how are women treated when they are no longer fertile? |
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7. Partnership for harmony in the home and for prosperity in business How can a wife and her husband obtain a favorable and mutual dependence/submission? |
"It is necessary that the process of conscientizing society with regard to various issues of discrimination and violence to woman be accelerated. . . . This book [course] by Virginia Saldanha encourages precisely this. . . . This book [course] is validated by Virginia's experience and struggle as a young widow as well as her extensive grassroots work with women." +Bosco Penha, Bishop of Bambay
Computer Assisted Learning
In some of the lessons in this course, there are some short videos that will be viewed. Accordingly, those taking this course will want to test their internet access speed and their computer settings to assure themselves that they can enjoy a clear reception of audio and video files. If you are working on a computer in a public space, you will want to have your earphones handy. To test your computer system, double-click on the image below. [Note: It takes about ten seconds before the sound track begins. At the end, use your browser's reverse button to return to this page. If you have technical difficulties, click here.]
Learning Style
Preparation: The course presumes no special previous training; however, it helps greatly if you have and will be active in doing some planning (alone or with others) during the time of this class.
Types of feedback called for: personal reflection on your own experiences and on the case studies described in the lessons.
Cross-cultural component = +6 Based on a scale +1 to +10. This rating indicates the degree to which the presentation of this course includes an examination of (a) the rich diversity of cultures existing today and (b) the transformations that a given culture experiences over a span of time.
Interactivity: Besides offering one's own thoughts for comment, each participant normally spends twenty minutes each week reflecting upon and offering feedback regarding the reflections of others in the class. Guidelines for offering feedback are presented and implemented in such a way as to assure respect for the individuality of each participant and to provide a safe atmonsphere for free and open exchanges.
Chatroom activity: On every Friday all the members of this course will participate in a 60-minute chatroom exchange on the topic of that week. These chatroom exchanges help to put a human face on the other members of your learning circle, and they result in depths of understanding that go way beyond the Exploratory Questions in each Lesson. These chatroom sessions are highly structured, highly engaging, and offer strong elements for feedback and creativity as well.
Since participants in your learning circle live in various times zones, I ask that you click here in order to determine the local time for you when it is 19:30 in India. Please arrive in the chatroom 10 minutes early so that everyone can begin together.
To activate the chatroom, paste this address into your browser or click here: http://www.basechat.com/c-files/catherinecollege.net/india.htm
Please try out this link now so that you can assure yourself that it will work for you when you need it.
Participants are welcome to meet with other participants in the chatroom at times and for purposes they set for themselves at any time during the course.
Textbook: none. All readings are supplied online.
Time required each week: 2 to 3 hours at times convenient to yourself.
Graduation Certificate: Participants who wish to merit a Graduation Certificate are asked to complete a research project that requires five to ten hours of research and writing beyond the seven lessons of the course. Practice shows that the choice of topic is best left open until the final weeks of the course when further details will be available.
Introduction
The enhancement of women currently underway in India?
India provides a unique environment for Virginia's small groups bent upon examining traditional images and transforming them into a fresh vision by women and for women. Her "small group empowerment" methods joins with prominent women scholars, theologians, religious sisters, and activists who have worked tirelessly to bring an end the historical suppression of women’s voice and rights in the family and in the political domain. Their committed leadership helped shape a historical event. The Catholic Bishops of India undertook a leading role in focusing on the improvement of women’s lives through the establishment of gender awareness and gender sensitisation programs for priests and parishes, as well as the establishment of gender policies at every level within the Church.
Cardinal Mar Varkey Vithayathil, President of the Catholic Bishops of India reflected the collective tone for these policy initiatives at the 2008 CBCI Commission for Women held in Jamshedpur. At the closing of the 28th plenary session focusing on “The Empowerment of Women in the Church and in Society” he noted:
History was being rewritten when 6 women speakers addressed 160 Bishops on the empowerment process. 3 Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, 40 women and 7 laymen participated in the 2 day deliberations of the General Assembly for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church in India. This Assembly concluded with the release of the Statement that considered it necessary to “mobilize our collective efforts toward elimination of the root causes of discrimination against women.” (Forward).
In the final Statement of the 28th CBCI Plenary Assembly, the bishops analysed the root causes of discrimination against women.
The culture of domination, marginalization and exclusion which embodies ideas, beliefs, values, traditions, rules, norms, perspectives (ideologies) that prefer males/sons has been styled in the culture of patriarchy. Through dominating social structures men own, control and manage financial, intellectual and ideological resources as well as the labour, fertility and sexuality of women, and thus perpetuate gender discrimination (119-120).
The bishops named many of the worst issues women face such as domestic and societal violence, female foeticide, infanticide, rape, molestation, kidnapping, abduction, battering, dowry deaths, murdering, and trafficking for sex and slavery while noting the convergence of discriminatory social structures that keep a disproportionate number of women in poverty, without access to decent living conditions, clean water, education, and healthcare. Further, with regards to women’s roles in the Church, the Bishops acknowledged “with a sense of sorrow we must admit that the women feel discriminated against, even in the Church” (120).
Given their findings, the CBCI committed every Regional Bishops’ Conference to develop, within a period of one year, a gender policy that will collectively serve as the foundation for a centralized CBCI gender policy (122-123). Those items set for immediate action included:
· Incorporate a gender perspective in all the Commissions of the Church;
· Provide theological, biblical and canonical studies that promote gender justice and an ecclesiology of partnership;
· Provide scholarships and part-time courses for women for theological, biblical and canonical studies;
· Provide opportunities for theologically trained women to contribute as pastoral workers, researchers, faith formators, professors in theologates and spiritual counsellors; and
· Prepare audio-visual material as an effective tool for gender sensitisation.
This course, along with our other gender courses, hope to join with the women and men of India in bringing forward the "gender perspective" called for by the Indian bishops.
See also these sources:
Silent revolution: more women elected in India than rest of world (19 Nov 2008)
Wiring up a Knowledge Revolution in Rural India (09 Sept 2003)
In India, New Opportunities for Women Draw Anger and Abuse From Men (25 Aug 2008)
Lifelong Learning
This course will equip you with the skills to discover the rich layer of presuppositions and implied social conditioning that operates whenever one decides to examine the experience of women in private or public life. With these basic skills, you will become a more capable leader and be able to help others understand how changing roles and attitudes toward women are effectively made and promoted within the larger society.
What participants in the pioneering trial are saying
To be completed as the trial progresses. . . .
Tutor availability: A tutor will be overseeing each session. You may contact your tutor via email anytime (and, in some instances, via phone during limited hours). You will receive regular feedback, encouragement, and challenges from your tutor each week.
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