“Violence in Samoa is enormous and yet people don’t consider violence as such,” says the Director of Catholic Social Services in Samoa, Sale Mikaele Kolio. To address this issue the Catholic Church has established a society with a vision to revive family love and end violence in homes. Called the Gaualofa Society, its mission is Read more
What makes a male child become a “boy,” as we understand that concept socially? In her new book, When Boys Become Boys, Judy Y. Chu reports on her two-year study in which she followed a group of boys from pre-kindergarten through first grade. She concluded that most of what we think of as “boy” behaviour isn’t Read more
The day Prime Minister Helen Clark was berated and humiliated at Waitangi for daring to speak on the marae should have been the day all iwi resolved to reassess the rules subordinating women on marae and in wharenui. It should have been considered urgent. Perhaps the indignity of that day was generally dismissed as mere Read more
In 1985, Mary Anne Warren coined the term gendercide to refer to the ritual eradication of women and girls throughout the world. More recently, the heartbreaking film It’s a Girl documents the effects of this practice on the numbers of girls and women in China and India. It makes for difficult viewing, particularly when confronted with the Read more
In a recently published book on the Eucharist a New Zealand Mercy sister, Dr Kathleen Rushton, has provided an historical context for Pope Francis’ gesture of including women among those whose feet he washed on Holy Thursday. In a chapter entitled Rediscovering Forgotten Features: Scripture, Tradition and Whose Feet May Be Washed on Holy Thursday Night, Read more
I applaud the sentiment behind the much-quoted phrase, “girls can do anything” but I am startled when I come across people who think it is literally true. Girls cannot do anything, and neither can boys. Our biological nature ensures that great and all as our human potential might be, there are limits to what is Read more
Corrections Minister Anne Tolley says she does not support changing the law to allow some transgender inmates to serve their terms in women’s prisons.
Read the article...Christians who make Bible reading a part of their everyday life prefer word-for-word translations of the original Greek and Hebrew over thought-for-thought translations, according to a new study released by LifeWay Research.
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A number of issues which may appear to be unrelated have been in the news Redefining Marriage, Children being raised in a “gender free” environment, Alasdair Thompson’s comments on workplace productivity, Cardinal sees ‘no theological obstacle’ to women priests. They are however connected by the underlying issue of gender difference. At one end of the Read more
Aborting female foetuses in India means there are 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged up to six. The gender-gap has widened by a million in the last 10 years. Selective sex selection Indian families where the first child has been a girl, more and more parents with access to prenatal ultrasound testing are sex-selecting Read more