women's issues are concerned -- because it is in their own interest to do so, a speaker said this week.

Ms Maria Thacker issued this challenge during an Amnesty International forum at the Cathedral Church Hall in Hamilton on Thursday evening.

Her fellow panelist Ms Leyoni Junos said a critical factor in the struggle to eradicate sexism involved a reassessment of all the ways that religion has been used to subjugate women.

"Women have been fighting for 200 years,'' she told the mostly female audience of around 50 people.

"But men need to grab the reigns and admit that the church, religion and mythology is sexist.

"We need to challenge men to make these reforms. They need to make a leap of conscience.

"Until people are willing to look at church history and come clean, discrimination against women will continue.'' Ms Junos was the second panelist to address the audience. Other speakers included Ms Clare Hatcher and Ms Kim Wilson.

All four speakers examined the different ways that societies around the world discriminated against women through laws, churches, languages and traditional ceremonies.

During the discussion after the speeches, it emerged that solutions to women's suffering can only be realised if men also embrace and work toward them.

Ms Thacker said that in most societies men have the power and they make rules to ensure their own advantage.

"Culture had to be constructed by some group,'' she said. "Culture is human made. It is a series of responses that meet the basic needs of a group of people.

"The first thing you discover is that the people in power make the rules.'' A complication immediately arises, she added, as women's rights organisations try to change rules and practices which are harmful to women because these norms are justified by the culture.