Harmoniously Combined: Should Women Regularly fill positions Traditionally considered Mens?

It seems every week I am reading a news article about some new push to include women in jobs that have been historically reserved for men: airlines with quotas for pilots, the Army frantically studying why women do not join Special Forces, manufacturing jobs, CEO’s, the list is quite literally endless.  The conservative and Catholic gut reaction to this push (at least my own) is too often a complete rejection of these attempts at their face value, to entrench ourselves in the traditional binary nature of jobs and public service and only grudgingly admit exceptions to this rule.  I was re-reading the encyclical Familiaris Consortio the other day, and came across a quotation with I found to be stand with such import that it remains as socially controversial today as it was upon the encyclical’s first publication.  I find it stands not only as a witness against the nebulous cloud that surrounds all familial roles but also holds elements which are equally important to a wider array of social issues: 

“There is no doubt that the equal dignity and responsibility of men and women fully justifies women’s access to public functions.  On the other hand, the true advancement of women requires that clear recognition be given to the value of their maternal and family role, by comparison with all other public roles and all other professions.  Furthermore, these roles and professions should be harmoniously combined if we wish the evolution of society and culture to be truly and fully human (P. 23)”.  

This claim presents itself as potentially controversial to both sides of the argument: on the one hand, it seems to explicitly call for the inclusion of women in every profession as long as their role is recognized first as belonging to the family.  On the other hand, it flies in the face of the push for inclusion at all costs of women at every level of society and in every profession, even at the cost of forced quota requirements above the actual levels of interest and qualification.  To correctly understand the encyclical, three aspects need to be emphasized as key: “advancement”, “recognition”, and “harmoniously combined”.  These three are key to understanding not only this particular passage on the involvement of women in larger societal and professional levels, but also key to understanding each individual of the family, and Man himself as a species.  

To better understand what the claim FS is here putting forth, I would like to rework and paraphrase the passage to a simple claim: “True advancement of [women, any given individual, man as a species] only comes from first recognizing the nature of the individual as it was from the very beginning, and harmoniously combining a societal and professional role in a way that upholds the dignity of that original nature”.  Paraphrased in this way, this claim can be widely applied to any of us still in the Church Militant and is a prerequisite for our own growth spiritually and physically.  To completely disregard the original intent and design of man is to intend failure.

While this claim is in its general abstract form widely applicable, it’s individual and specific application must remain just that: individual and specific.  Here it is that we can see and rely on the importance of JPII’s writings on Thomistic Personalism and the human as a being who is simultaneously object and subject.  Any attempt at applying a widespread societal role to any member of society that is based on a solely objective look at that individual nature, with no consideration for the individual subjective experience of that reality and the situations that create this experience is doomed for failure and the creation of sub-human living conditions.  As an example: if I recognize the nature of woman is primarily tied to that of mother and family life, but there is a woman who is widowed and still has 4 children to feed, my attempt to constrict her to home life and reliance on welfare would be an insult and hinderance to her call to provide for her children.  Though I have a recognition of her nature, I do not provide for the subjective living out and answering God’s calls of this particular woman.  

This hypothetical example provides a framework for discussing the harmonious combination of the objective recognition of nature and the subjective experience of the life as individually lived. Clearly more is to be done in this hypothetical example than merely allowing the woman to work; and as the original quotation from FS states: “equal dignity and responsibility fully justifies women’s access to public functions”.  In this case, my decision to allow her to work is not really my decision at all: she needs no affirmation from me to pursue this.  This is also not to admit that we should be accepting of any profession filled by any member of the family, so long as we utilize the verbiage that it is filled “in the proper context”.  The crux of the claim is that we are created specifically for specific roles, and that in order to be fully human we must be first and foremost focused on that role.  And it is here that we finally see the point I am getting at here: it is completely acceptable to recognize specific professions as being more conducive to upholding the dignity and realization of the created roles between man and woman, between husband and wife.  But the subjective realization of living out of those roles can and does vary within the context of the individual family.  Though we should readily see and accept some level of blurring the lines between a job that is a “man’s” job vs. a “woman’s” job, these blurs should be the exception: once we begin to see widespread inclusion and even quotas to fill x amount of women in men’s jobs, the subjectivity of the individual gives way to a completely opposite objective reality: that men and women have to be the same