eople a new system of values. Only a
breakthrough in understanding that is scientific and spiritual in the
fullest sense of the terms will empower the human race to assume the
trusteeship toward which history impels it.

All people will have sooner or later to recover, for example, the capacity
for contentment, the welcoming of moral discipline, and the devotion to
duty that, until relatively recently, were considered essential aspects of
being human. Repeatedly throughout history, the teachings of the Founders
of the great religions have been able to instill these qualities of
character in the mass of people who responded to them. The qualities
themselves are even more vital today, but their expression must now take a
form consistent with humanity's coming-of-age. Here again, religion's
challenge is to free itself from the obsessions of the past: contentment
is not fatalism; morality has nothing in common with the life-denying
puritanism that has so often presumed to speak in its name; and a genuine
devotion to duty brings feelings not of self-righteousness but of
self-worth.

The effect of the persistent denial to women of full equality with men
sharpens still further the challenge to science and religion in the
economic life of humankind. To any objective observer the principle of the
equality of the sexes is fundamental to all realistic thinking about the
future well-being of the earth and its people. It represents a truth about
human nature that has waited largely unrecognized throughout the long ages
of the race's childhood and adolescence. "Women and men", is Baha'u'llah's
emphatic assertion, "have been and will always be equal in the sight of
God." The rational soul has no sex, and whatever social inequities may
have been dictated by the survival requirements of the past, they clearly
cannot be justified at a time when humanity stands at the threshold of
maturity. A commitment to the establishment of full equality between men
and women, in all departments of life and at every level of society, will
be central to the success of efforts to conceive and implement a strategy
of global development.

Indeed, in an important sense, progress in this area will itself be a
measure of the success of any development program. Given the vital role of
economic activity in the advancement of civilization, visible evidence of
the pace at which development is progressing will be the extent to which
women gain access to all aven