#FaithInWomen | The Parliament Celebrates the Interfaith Movement on International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day and the Parliament of the World’s Religions applauds the global interfaith movement that is celebrating women and girls all over the world who are at the heart of our religious and spiritual communities.
The Parliament has a proud history of pursuing the advancement of women in the world:

At the first Parliament in 1893, nineteen women speakers made women’s religious history when they addressed themes of religion and women from a racially and religiously diverse podium, when women rarely spoke in public settings.

The 1993 Parliament produced the profoundly influential Global Ethic enumerating the equality of  men and women.

At the 2009 Parliament, Jimmy Carter gave his groundbreaking speech on the responsibility of the world’s religions to affirm and uphold the human rights and dignity of women.

In 2012, the Parliament established it’s Women’s Task Force to lift the voices, perspectives, and influence of women in our movement.

This year, we launch the Inaugural Women’s Assembly and Program Initiative for Global Advancement, a major feature of the 2015 Salt Lake City Parliament.

The Parliament is committed to maximizing opportunities for women worldwide to be empowered agents of peace. When the next global generation of women measures our work for a more peaceful, just and sustainable world, the prominence of female voices will be a critical marker.  We commit to making it happen.  We are buoyed now by a growing women’s interfaith network and drawing on the theme of this year’s United Nations observance of International Women’s Day, “Empower Women, Empower Humanity: Picture it!”- we affirm the moral responsibility of the interfaith movement to protect, preserve, and promote the dignity and human rights of women.
This is how we reclaim the heart of our humanity.
Today, more than half of 2015 Parliament registrants are women, and key note speakers include women Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and prominent religious leaders, scholars and activists like Karen Armstrong, Vandana Shiva and Terry Tempest Williams. Women from all over the world will converge in Salt Lake City to assure that the world’s religions affirm the dignity and human rights of women.
We invite you to join us in making women’s history.

Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons