Thanks to the many women who, every day, keep communities, families, and businesses going, simply by knowing how to “hold on” when everything around them is shaking and falling apart.
by Luigino Bruni
published in the Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/04/2026
For several decades now, economic theory has begun to focus on gender-specific dimensions—that is, the study of any specific and salient characteristics of how women act in the economic and social spheres compared to men.
There are now entire academic programs dedicated to “Gender Economics,” which, based on a growing body of empirical data, highlight certain behavioral trends and patterns. Women (on average and in large numbers), for example, are less competitive than their male counterparts. Instead, they are more capable of cooperation, place greater importance on relational assets and the affective-emotional dimensions of relationships—a strength that, of course, also becomes a greater vulnerability and complication in managing work relationships and, generally, in relationships that often break down due to emotional friction. Along these lines, I want to highlight an aspect of the feminine dimension that has not been particularly analyzed by social science studies. I am referring to the different attitude, or the different culture, with which women manage crises in communities—I repeat: these are tendencies. I am considering religious or charismatic communities in particular, but many of these considerations can also be extended to workplaces, civic associations, and the family.
In recent years, I have written extensively about crises in communities and Ideal-Driven Organizations (IDOs), and I have observed hundreds of them grappling with major processes of change. And I have identified certain relatively consistent aspects. A summary of what I have learned could be formulated as follows: women and men respond differently to community crises. While we men are generally—and often very—busy analyzing the causes of crises, debating diagnoses, and hypothesizing possible solutions, placing great weight on ideas and ideologies, and getting deeply caught up in debates about what is wrong, women have a more vital and visceral relationship with reality and with life, and are more interested in what is going well, even while seeing the problems.
I have seen entire religious communities and movements avoid collapse after major crises because some women simply continued to live their lives while everything around them was falling apart. Reciting the Liturgy of the Hours, opening the soup kitchen to the poor, cleaning a room and a bathroom, cooking, proclaiming the Word, and living out their charism. Instead of getting bogged down in endless discussions about the causes of the crisis, about what was still alive in the charism, about the possibilities for the future, they were anchored in the present, and did not allow the present—precisely—to be devoured by the weight of the past and doubts about the uncertain future. With their feet firmly on the ground, the women “stood,” they knew how to stand—stabat…—through long Holy Fridays and Saturdays. This is not an expression of a lesser capacity for abstraction in women (as was unfortunately thought in the past, even within the Church), but depends on a different vocation to life and concreteness, which makes that phrase so dear to Pope Francis true and alive for them in a special way: “Reality is superior to the idea.” For them, no idea is more concrete than reality, not even the best and most luminous ideas. And the good idea-logos is the one that becomes flesh. Thank you, then, to the many women who, every day, keep communities, families, and businesses standing, simply by knowing how to “remain” when everything around them is shaking and collapsing.
Photo Credit: © Fabiano Fiorin / MSA Archive