Missionaries of the Sacred

The are many studies regarding women in the workplace, and peo­ple certainly have different opinions regarding the role of women as workers and mothers, but what does the Catholic Church have to say? Are women supposed to stay home or work outside the home?

In the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collabo­ration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, then Prefect Joseph Ratzinger addressed this question. He explained that “...what John Paul II has termed the genius of women....implies first of all that women be significantly and actively present in the fam­ily....” He goes on to say “It also means that women should be pres­ent in the world of work and in the organization of society, and that women should have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.” In the same letter, he also reaffirmed the value of a mother’s work in the home, and the teaching that women who want to be stay at home mothers should be able to do so without being stigmatized by society or penalized financially.

In other words, mothers should be active in their family, but they should also be to influence society through their work. Individually and as a society, we should support mothers who choose to stay at home, and we should also support mothers who choose to work outside the home.