The ten-year-old gender policy of the Indian Catholic Church has proved to be a failed promise, women theologians say.

A great majority of women’s servitude betrays male privilege that is normalized in the families and in the Church. “This situation makes us interrogate whether the ‘Gender Policy of the Catholic Church in India’ acclaimed as the first of its kind, has remained a failed promise even after 10 years of its existence,” the Indian Women Theologians Forum said in a statement.

The forum’s April 28-May 1 annual meet at Good Shepherd Convent Bengaluru deliberated the theme, “Towards a Gender Just Church.”

The participants said they are pained at the indifference and silence of the Church leaders to sexual abuse survivors, including religious women.

“We are deeply disturbed by the double standards with which the survivors and their supporters are further victimized while the alleged offenders are sympathized and defended in various ways,” said a statement issued by the forum after the meeting.

The statement also noted that the notion of gender justice still remains an ambivalent concept or, a mismatch within the framework of the institutional Church.

“While the Christian doctrine affirms equality between women and men on the biblical foundation of the creation of humans ‘in God’s image’ (Gen.1: 26-28), women’s experience of discrimination, silencing and exclusion within the ecclesiastical structures point to the contrary,” the statement said.