406 Global Ethics for Leadership
itage, identity, and teachings and that they use to weigh their course of
action.
To illustrate the tensions of reality, look at the example of gender
equality. Core religious teachings as well as the UDHR are unambigu-
ous in their assertions of equal dignity of all human beings as well as
equal rights and obligations. Some religious leaders have worked to ad-
vance women’s roles and to shatter barriers to their dignity and devel-
opment, drawing on their understanding of the universal principles out-
lined above. However, deeply embedded in many holy scriptures, in
parables and stories, and in institutions are large inequalities that in
practice, in many traditions and world regions, limit women’s possibili-
ties for development, trample their dignity, subordinate their positions,
and denigrate their gifts and contributions. The “glass ceilings” that limit
women’s possibilities in many spheres, in religious and secular institu-
tions and in the home and within families, are often bolstered by reli-
gious beliefs and practices, to a degree that there are few more enduring
ceilings than those that can be described as “stained glass ceilings”. The
tempting notion of “complementarity” as an adjunct to “equality” is an
insidious and ultimately incompatible approach that in practice means
subordination and separation more than equality and unity.
For men and women, as well as different ethnic groups, social clas-
ses, and the castes of profession and nationality, there is far to go in
translating the universal values of equality and dignity, whether as ex-
pressed in the UDHR, in scriptures, in a global ethics, and in a notion of
the Golden Rule or Ubuntu, into practice in ways that can liberate hu-
man possibilities and move from aspiration and inspiration to reality.
That task still lies before us.