Women make up half of the world’s population. We have multiple faces. We are of all categories, of every situation, of all cultures.

You meet us in the streets, in our families, in our work places, or at home. So many women with or without a name to designate them. With them, we carry in our history and in our being, their anguish, their hopes, their accomplishments, their struggles… in their daily lives.

These women, « it is I, it is she, it’s my sister, it is us! »

When Christ spoke the Word to a woman of the Gospel, life reopened before her. It helped her to remove the adjectives that described her miseries. She then became someone in her own eyes and in the eyes of others.

This Word of God is still of actuality today. It challenges us to search for an answer to the cries of the woman, that is, her aspiration to regain her dignity and her rightful place.

What is the rightful place of the woman?

It is to promote communion and sharing of responsibility. It is to enter a world of interrelationships and not one of division or search for power.

What women want is the freedom and the possibility to use the gifts that God gave them for the good of the Church and the world.

Following Jesus and in His manner, we, Daughters of Jesus are invited to meet these women in our societies who aspire to find redress in their lives.

We do not work only “for” these women but also “with” them, and in union with other networks to demand laws and structures that will be more just for them and their families, to militate for equality between people.

In regard to them and to everything that harms their dignity, we have to ask questions:

• Where is the grandeur that Jesus attributed to the women He met on his route?
• What is the origin of the belief that women are inferior to men and must be
  treated as such?
  
• As society and Church, what are some of the concrete actions we can perform in
  favour of the women?
  

S. Colette Gélinas fj