Pope Leo XIV has much work ahead on equality, labor, and migration
The leader of the Catholic Church must respond to the hopes of women, including in the developed world
Who made the food for the 2025 conclave? Who made all of those garments for the Mass before the conclave? Who cleaned the floors? Who is doing the hidden labor? While the first question has been publicly answered, the nod to those who did the labor, the nuns from Domus Sanctae Marthae, came with a quick critique: Come for the Conclave. Don’t Stay for the Food.
In her 2016 speech at The World of Labor during Pope Francis’ visit to Juarez, Daisy Flores Gamez highlighted that from her experience as a worker, work roles affect all aspects of society, meaning that too much time is spent on work to make ends meet for the majority of women. Furthermore, houses are only places for sleeping. She calls for a dignity of labor which allows for people to make ends meet with time left to build community where people can “learn the essential issues: solidarity, appreciation, caring for others and the respect for human dignity.”
The Catholic teaching on labor has been explicitly strong on issues regarding labor rights and justice since Rerum Novarum. In 2015 Pope Francis received international attention for calling the international pay gap a “scandal.” And Pope Leo XIV plans to lean strongly on the wealth of Catholic social teaching “in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.” Pope Leo has much work ahead to attend to the hopes of many women around the world regarding labor both within and outside the Vatican, like those articulated by Flores Gamez.
From the day laborer to the theologian, people are struggling to maintain work and make ends meet. An unjust global labor system creates a culture of fear based upon what Pope Francis named a “culture of death.” Women are unevenly impacted by labor and economics globally. They continue to face labor inequities in pay as well as labor afforded to them.
Globally, 94.6% of men participate in the paid labor force, while only 51.6% of women do. On average, women in the labor market still earn 23 percent less than men globally. Beyond earning less, women also save less and 742 million women are excluded from formal financial services, if that were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.
Yet, the picture of impoverished women often reflects images of women from places often called “underdeveloped”; “developing”; “southern hemisphere” or “poor.” Historically, the northern half of the globe has been considered wealthier and more developed with the southern half being seen as needing charitable aid. However, a closer look at a couple of interesting trends shows something surprising about the relationship between the northern and southern hemispheres of the world. The Gallup World Poll 2014-2018 chart depicts the ten countries where single mothers are most likely to fall into the lowest income group to be, in order: Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, Norway, and United States. Single mothers fare terribly in the northern half of the globe.
Regarding migrations, the number of women who migrate globally has been decreasing since 2000. Yet, about 50 percent of the people who immigrate to Mexico from the USA annually are women. According to the Department of State, about 1.6 million US expatriates live in Puerto Vallarta, Merida, Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Lake Chapala and Tulum, where they form strong communities of American citizens, including retirees. While cost of living is not named as a reason for people from the USA to migrate to Mexico, it is listed as the first and strongest pro for moving.
Again, there is much work for Pope Leo XIV on women’s equality, labor and migration, and not just, as might be first thought, in the developed world.
Neomi De Anda is Associate Professor of Theology the University of Dayton (Ohio).
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