Gender equality, and the pursuit of greater educational and economic empowerment for women, have been a focus of the operations of NGOs around the world for a long time. But an emphasis on gender equity has started to move from the world of charities and foundations into governments, with both Sweden and Canada making explicitly feminist commitments for their foreign policy in recent years.

True, neither the pope, let alone Argentina, have the political, military or financial power to enforce the UNGA-approved principles. But they can exercise their “soft power,” which is the ability of a country — or, in this case, the Vatican — to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion, be it (again, in this case) financial or political. In fact, soft power, a given for important states, is a must for those nations lacking such attributes.