"The Status of Women": Two American Catholic Women at the UN, 1947-1972

Abstract

From the late 1940's until the American bishops closed their United Nations Office in 1972, Catherine Schaefer and Alba Zizzamia, two American lay women, served as both National Catholic Welfare Conference UN Observers and Catholic Non-Governmental Organization representatives for the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations. This article discusses their creation and leadership of a circle of Catholic NGOs at the UN, many of them women, that developed strategies for promoting Roman Catholic teachings on issues of concern for women, and delves into their successes and failures in matters such as the family, marriage and divorce, child and adult education, prostitution, equal pay, birth control, and the status of women in the developing nations.