For one thing, there are far more men, everywhere you look, in positions of leadership, relative to women. In the College of Cardinals, and in the worldwide priesthood, which abides by the tradition (which isn’t to say dogma) of ordaining only men, there are no women at all. And in the Roman Curia, which is the administrative arm of the Holy See, which can include members of the laity, there is, at the time of this writing, only a handful of women, some of whom I believe were appointed by the current Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. Women can serve as Abbesses, or Mother Superiors, in convents, where nuns take vows, and devote themselves to lives of cloistered holiness, but, in diocesan life, and in the Mass, where the laity is concerned, they have been limited mainly to provisory roles. This in spite of the fact that more than half of the world’s Catholics are women.