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“Old woman,” the young woman asked, “What is the heaviest burden a woman has to bear?” And the
old woman answered her, “Young woman, the heaviest burden a woman has to bear is to have no
burden at all.”

In a world where millions are poor and billions are hungry, the world is now full of conferences intent
on resolving problems that are crippling the development of the world. Symposiums, think tanks, and
forums on global issues are emerging everywhere. Conferences on global change, global development,
global needs, global politics, global economics and global agendas swirl around the planet, the tsunamis
of modern intellectual life. And yet, little changes.

The question is why? And the answer is hiding in plain sight. These conferences will never solve the
major problems facing the human community because half the population of the world is being left out
of the conversation. Half the wisdom of the world is being ignored. Half the concerns of the human
race are not being taken into consideration. Half the resources of the world, women, are being
ignored in the solving of problems that face us all. As a result, both halves are suffering from our failure
to approach both problems and solutions from the vantage point of the entire human race.

India, the land of banyan trees whose roots speak of depth, of lotus flowers that speak of survival, and
of goddesses like Lakshmi who is concerned for both material and spiritual riches, of Durga who
protects the righteous and of Sarasvati who brings learning to wisdom, is slated to become the
launching ground of another kind of reflection on the human condition.

The first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, “Making Way for the
Feminine for the Benefit of the World Community” will begin in Jaipur on March 6. Over 450 women
from 45 countries converge on Jaipur to open this first platform for Global Transformation, not for
celebrating femaleness for its own sake, but to offer the world the missing resource of our time, the
power of the feminine.

This conference is not an exercise in anybody’s chauvinism, national or local, female or male. This
conference will raise women’s voices in international affairs for the sake of the whole human race.
Without an increase in the feminine qualities of compassion, care, human community and human
support in both women and men in a world that gives power preference over preservation, we are all in
danger.

Women from around the world are coming to India, the home of the Goddesses, to take their
responsibility in bearing the burdens of the world—whether anyone else yet has the sense to invite
them to do their share of it or not.

---
Joan Chittister, co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, was instrumental in organizing the
March 6-10, 2008 women’s summit in India. She will address the conference and help facilitate the
event. This is an excerpt from an article, “The Missing Resource Is Not Oil; It’s Women” that she wrote
for the Indian Times.

For more info on the conference: www.gpiw.org/jaipur.html