Kerala Catholic Church aims for women's political empowerment

(Sept.16,2009): The Catholic Church in southern India’s Kerala State, plans to launch an aggressive strategy for the political empowerment of women. Beena Sebastian, secretary for the women's commission of the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council, said the immediate reason for the move is to prepare Catholic women ahead of local elections scheduled for 2010 in the state.
The bishops recently released a gender policy that sets aside 33 percent of seats for women in Church bodies. Kerala's Marxist-led coalition government plans to go further than that and reserve 50 percent of seats in local government bodies for women. Recently, the state government convened a special session of the legislative assembly to pass the necessary legislation. The new law would entitle women to head half the state's 999 villages, 152 blocks and 14 district councils, besides the 52 municipalities and five municipal corporations. Together these have some 20,554 seats. Sebastian, a sociologist calls the bill "a blessing in disguise" for the Church, which plans to train Catholic women to contest local elections. The training includes setting up parish women's groups for social action. The state's female literacy rate is 88 percent, well above the national average of 54 percent. However, Kerala also ranks high in domestic violence and harassment of women in their workplace, she said.