Each year on International Women’s Day we reflect and celebrate the social, economic, cultural, spiritual, and political achievements of women worldwide. Many great women continue to stand up in these troubling times for the greater good of our communities and our histories. It is precisely in these times that we want to honour not only the heard but also the unheard voices—the marginalized women whose stories have not reached us through the media; those whose stories have been silenced; those women who courageously resist daily systematic and structural disadvantages by educating themselves, empowering their families, and developing visions for their communities and the world.
We also want to celebrate those women who are striving to change the currents of our time by their intellectual engagement with faith and modernity, with tradition and change. We honour the women theologians, philosophers, scientists, educators, and leaders—all who are striving to construct a compassionate architecture for our world through word and action. Women are a source of resilience and agents of change and they bring a discourse that is life-affirming, peace-centered, compassion-driven, and dialogue-focused. We need to listen to these voices and they must be equal partners in the stewardship of our world and in the construction of our theological and spiritual discourse.
