It is easy to adopt popular stereotypes about the roles of women and men in society, in the family, the workplace, and in politics. If we don’t reflect on what these are saying about both women and men, we tend to repeat what we have been taught from our childhood. And that isn’t necessarily good or appropriate for a world that is rapidly modernising. For example, it is said that women have a unique “maternal instinct” which is tender, nurturing and protective. Or women are better at generative activities, which is why they work more on the domestic front, while men can handle technology like tractors or harvesters.

Are we really saying that women cannot drive or repair machines? Or that men do not have a father’s instinct to care for their children and people? It can be really liberating to re-evaluate what we have always taken for granted. For example, on three occasions I have been a guest of the Camaldolese Sisters in St Catherine’s Monastery in Karatu, near Ngorongoro in Tanzania. While I have been making my retreat there, I have seen the sisters drive the tractors, ploughing acres and acres of fields which they cultivate. When there is a repair to be made, the sisters find a work-around to keep the tractors functioning. I have seen men who are stay-at-home fathers, and others in two of the slums of Nairobi who take it upon themselves to feed dozens of children who come to their house or school every day. This nurturing role traditionally associated with women, is taken to new heights by concerned fathers.

In his encyclical on care for our common home, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis does not say: “this aspect of care is for men… This aspect is for women.” Rather, he calls on all people living on this planet to take the care of our home with the utmost seriousness. I have attended meeting where (mostly European or American) women have criticised the encyclical for not specifically addressing women’s issues. This is true. On the eleven occasions women are mentioned in the encyclical, it is always in the expression ‘men and women.’

Indeed, there are issues in our common home which affect women more directly. And they are not to be underestimated. But the message of Laudato Si’ is that we are all in the same world together. Pope Francis is urging a solidarity that brings all people together to care for one another and for our home irrespective of differences of gender, age, continent, wealth status, occupation or generation. We will all survive or perish as the world is less and less able to bear our excesses. Of course the wealthier will be able to hold out for longer, to buy themselves some extra time. Ironically it is precisely their plundering of our Mother Earth that is pushing the planet to the brink of exhaustion.

Men and women both aspire to short cuts for our food – using agricultural chemicals that make food cheaper, more plentiful and less disease free. But these chemicals leave their mark on the soil and in the water bodies into which they run off. Both women and men would like comfortable living quarters and well equipped homes, even though the planet has to bear the burden of the production of these. We all like comfortable transport when it is necessary to move from A to B, sometimes without caring about the added cost in pollution and greenhouse gases that the planet has to pay for private cars or bulkier vehicles. Neither men nor women as a group are more exempt from inflicting harm on our Earth with our heavy ecological footprint.

Nobody is exempt from what Pope Francis recommends in the last two chapters of the encyclical: Men and women all need education about our environment. We all need to dialogue with one another. We all need to get our hands dirty. We all need to pray to God for a profound conversion, to change our attitudes about animals, plants and the physical earth. Men and women can learn from our children who worry about their future on a planet that is struggling. We should all take seriously the life that will be lived by future generations. In a spirit of synodality we listen to each other, without giving priority to the experience of women or men. We can all learn more about the human condition, and the limits of our planet, and modify our lifestyle accordingly.

Originally published in New People (Nairobi) in March-April 2024

Prof. Peter Knox SJ, PhD

New People

CTEWC