Dear Dr. Mlambo-Ngcuka,
Religious institutions - and religion in general - are responsible for much of the world’s pervasive gender inequality. In the USA, evangelical Christians are avidly against gender equality; elsewhere it's Islam; and gender inequality is built in to the very framework of the Catholic Church.
In an ideal world, the U.N. would tell Pope Francis that it's time to start ordaining women priests and stop opposing contraception (for starters). But would that be a politically advisable thing for the Executive Director of UN Women to do? Probably not. Should she generalize by calling on religious institutions worldwide to stop perpetuating male superiority in their teachings? She'd be attacked on all sides. And yet that is the kind of thing we need for the U.N. to be doing. Doing anything less is to ignore the elephant in the room.
