Feminist research in ethics : an introduction -- Theology in fragmented time : reflections with the concept 'postmodernism' as a starting point -- On the material spirituality of housework and its political implications -- Neither trivial nor sentimental : de-trivialization as a method in women's studies -- Power that we have; power that we need -- Women's solidarity : a value with a future -- Androcentrism and where do we go from here? : perspectives for theological reflection on 'the human (...) being' -- The minor distinction between mothers and test tubes : on the concept of women in science -- Feminist ethics and the ecology question -- The debate on animal experiments -- Biotechnology and ethics -- Invitation to feminist reflection on the economy -- Femaleness as social work -- From the norm of marriage to a plurality of lifestyles. (shrink)

A middle-aged Swiss friend tells me that, for her, God is ‘a contaminated word, … loaded with the spirit of many hundreds of years and miles of library shelves, a word that has nothing to do with the holistic worldview she embraces today.’1 So, she says, she has simply ‘removed the word from her vocabulary’: It’s out, it’s past, it has become a word that is used by other people only. The mindset that is expressed in these words is typical (...) for the situation in contemporary Western Europe. Many feel alienated from the notions and lifestyles and have left the institutions – churches, synagogues, mosques – that traditionally represent what we call ‘religion’. Besides, there are, in this part of the world, so many alternatives that allow one to form a meaning of life and provide security, togetherness and entertainment: family brunches on Sunday morning, TV movies, festivals, excursions, concerts, meditation workshops, neopaganist or atheist meetings, political engagements, lonely walks in the woods…. (shrink)

This article explores the nature of being ‘of the truth’ in risky prophetic speaking by women. This is counter to strategies which avoid truth telling, such as deprecating qualifications, scholarly objectivity and canonization. In contrast, it has to do with inspiration, and meaning. At the end of patriarchy, in a post-patriarchal world, the article asks how women and men can speak the truth prophetically, in ways that will change the world.

This article takes the form of an interview, in which the dialogue is internal. It is based on the author's experiment with the idea of the world as a household, which involves restoring household activities as free and independent activities. The author recollects earlier feminism's tendency to despise activities such as cooking and cleaning, because of their patriarchal inclusion in the stereotype of female dependency. She considers the household to be a fundamental human concept, which underlies lives and relationships, and (...) is capable of providing viable alternatives to the independency/dependency structures of patriarchy, embodied in secondary models such as the market place. (shrink)