Women... a changing view

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 4, Issue 23, 4 November 1986, Page 11

Women... a changing view

Congratulations, women of the Waimarino. Last Saturday you celebrated your first Christian Women's Breakfast — a sign of the times around here. Reflecting on the lives of my own sisters and others, 1 have come of late to realise more and more just how oppressed your sex has been. and still is. As a minister, I assure you that the Church too recognises a valid women's liberation movement. One influence on me in this has been my niece. A year or more ago I observed, with amusement at first but then with interest and concern, how she was becoming more and more indignant over the way women are exploited and harassed. She too has made me more aware of sexist language which is becoming^o hurtful to more and more women, l'm having to change my "hims" to "him hers." Her comments on my two lists for the roles of husband and wife made me adjust the whole thing in a swing away from any suggestion of wife being subservient to husband. to the much more positive approach of her being

the homemaker supported by him, and him the provider and protector supported by her. A balanced view promoting the liberation of women today in New Zealand is expressed in a book just called "A Changing Order." It is written by a Christchurch nun, Sister Pauline O'Regan, who at fifty moved from a traditional, safe Convent and teaching • life, to the last fifteen years in houses-become-convents. with two other Sisters, in the poorer parts of Aranui. Christchurch. Here she defends women's rights, in particular those of solo mothers. in her own simple but practical and intelligent. way, from the criticism they received especiaily in the seventies. She is also concerned with the genuinely unemployed. from the clobbering they are getting in tne eighties just for being on the dole. In her book, she follows the path of the nun emerging into the woman. It is published by Allen and Unwin, 60 Cambridge Tce, Wellington. The Christian studies the attitude of Jesus to women. He/she does not despise Jesus' mother just because

she was a woman of her time. Quite the contrary — she is accorded, by Jesus' followers, every respect the mother of Jesus. Son of God, should be given. She conceived of the Holy Spirit, not of a man. I leave her with you ... to ponder ... as she too "pondered all these things in her heart". as a model of womanhood, of motherhood and as a model of a lady.

Fr Bernie

Vella