Governments must explore ways in which to involve women in church decision-making processes.
The Marshall Islands’ Minister for Women, Jess Gasper Junior, says it is possible for church and state to collaborate for the advancement of women.
Addressing church participants at the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women, Gasper said government policies might be able to influence churches.
“And I wanted to see what government policies we can enact so that we can help with gender equality,” Gasper said.
“And I want to help if there's any way that I can help, whether it's legislation or, you know, just speaking to the masses of the public, I would definitely do it.’’
Participants from the Pacific Conference of Churches told the conference that women still faced hurdles in many religious organisations and were often excluded from the decision-making processes.
The PCC with member churches has embarked on a programme to improve gender balance in church leadership structures.
Gasper said studies into the involvement of women at church leadership levels were important because of the influence churches had in the region.
He said women in church structures had important contributions to make in ending gender-based violence. They were also instrumental, Gasper said, in climate change activities and ensuring better health services.
The Majuro conference focused on gender-based violence, the health of women and girls and climate change.
“Maybe we can look at it, we can do some studies, so that we can help our governments,’’ he said.
“Basically there are three pillars in our culture – there's the faith base, yep, there’s our government, and then there's our cultural traditional leaders.’’
But he warned that it would be important to ensure that one institution did not impinge on the rights of the others.
“It's finding the balance between maybe theology without infringing on corroborate, bring these together.’’
