Empowering Disempowered Working Women

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to elaborate a contextual gendered African Christian social ethics that addresses the oppression and marginalization of working women in Africa. The author argues that in order to meet this goal, it is necessary to contextualize CST, to introduce a feminist hermeneutics along with works from African women theologians, to include African liberation theology and to add the analysis of the social sciences. The dissertation has four chapters. The first chapter presents how CST (Roman magisterium and African bishops) has tackled the issue of the empowerment of workers in general and that of women in particular in post-conciliar documents. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of CST. The following chapters address those weaknesses. The second chapter offers a systematic analysis of the condition of working women with the help of social sciences. The third chapter presents the theoretical components of a gendered African social ethics. The latter relies on African liberation theology, CST principles, and elements of feminist thought. The fourth chapter deepens the analysis of the notion of empowerment and suggests four concrete practices to empower working women, namely, socializing the feminine, the church’s conversion, biblical storytelling and partnering with other institutions