'Treat women as equals'
2002-07-23 09:10
Libreville - Roman Catholic bishops on Monday urged the societies of central Africa to give women due credit and recognition for their "irreplaceable work" and stop treating them as inferior to men.
An episcopal conference gathering bishops from host country
Gabon, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial
Guinea and Congo, denounced "serious hindrances still blocking the promotion (of women) and their potential".
Such barriers arose from "the weight of tradition manifest in
prejudices which hold that men are superior to women and which are bred into people from birth", the bishops said in a statement
issued at the end of their talks.
The statement was the outcome of a meeting in Equatorial
Guinea's capital Malabo between July 7 and 14, but it was not
released until Monday.
The bishops of the region condemned the exploitation of women
and a range of social and cultural prohibitions governing their
behaviour.
It singled out practices such as "the genital mutilation of
women", or female circumcision, "early or forced marriages,
abortion, and widowhood by way often of harsh and painful rituals
for women, often blamed for the deaths of their husband".
The bishops commended the "commitment of women to their
irreplaceable work in contributing in a decisive way to the life of societies and of churches" and called for efforts to "promote the dignity of women and their specific roles in the family, society and the church".
"Everything should be done to put an end to all forms of
discrimination and injustice against women," said the church
leaders, who were holding the sixth of their Central African
regional conferences, which take place every three years.
The next such conference will take place in Chad in 2005. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA