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Daughters of Wisdom
Women and Leadership in the Global Church
Edited by Ahida Calderón Pilarski
Foreword by Teresa Maya
Series: Studies in World Catholicism
Imprint: Cascade Books
This book offers a window into current realities regarding women's leadership in the global church and explores strategic recommendations to nurture this leadership in the twenty-first century. The essays in this volume were initially presented at an international conference organized by the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology (CWCIT) at DePaul University in 2018. The reference to "Daughters of Wisdom" in the title for this volume was aimed at capturing the diversity of ways which women have found to exercise their leadership in responding to the challenging and/or hopeful realities of their contextual locations and their faith and social communities.
The authors address particularly different aspects of women's leadership in the Catholic Church, with a special emphasis on the global South. The contributors are lay and religious people from India, Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, the US, Singapore, and the Philippines. The topics explored in this volume include women's use of Scripture, the ecclesiological basis for women in church leadership, and the leadership roles that women have been exercising already in grassroots church communities, in Marian devotion, in faith-based social movements, and in theological education.
Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Professor of Old Testament at Saint Anselm College. Her research focuses on the intersection of culture and gender in biblical interpretation, especially in Latina and mujerista biblical hermeneutics. She has published papers on the prophets, migration, Latinx and Latin American biblical hermeneutics, feminist interpretation, and edited or co-edited several books, including: By Bread Alone: Reading the Bible Through the Eyes of the Hungry (2014), Judges (2018), and 2 Kings (2019).
“Many are the ways in which women de facto exercise transformative and prophetic leadership throughout the world. Such ways, however, often remain ignored and insufficiently affirmed in many corners of church and society. We have an obligation, ethical and religious, to learn more from how, where, and why Christian women lead. Reading the voices gathered in Ahida Pilarski’s Daughters of Wisdom is a solid step in fulfilling such an obligation.”
—Hosffman Ospino, Boston College
“Daughters of Wisdom offers a paradigm for every conversation about women and the church in the third millennium, drawing from the tradition, the academy, and the apostolate. Readers learn of the ways women integrate faith, family, and communal life in prophetic ways in spaces within the church and the world.”
—Susan M. Timoney, The Catholic University of America
“If the Catholic Church across the world is going to walk together in synodality, then, as this inspiring volume makes clear, its men and male leadership are going to have to catch up. The essays here reiterate that the wisdom of women, who have long sustained the church as the Blessed Virgin sustained the Christ child, lights a vibrant way ahead and their lead offers a guide to the path of faithfulness in this third millennium.”
—Daniel P. Rhodes, Loyola University Chicago
“Daughters of Wisdom vibrantly reveals the steadfast living Spirit moving among us through the creative and adaptive leadership of women on the peripheries, amidst great obstacles with great love. Indeed, hidden treasures for the church and world, we must heed their prophetic invitation to risk creating living structures of and for the earth and the gospel. This hope-filled book will inspire us to do so, together as church.”
—Joanne Doi, Catholic Theological Union
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