An apostolic letter on the dignity and vocation of women, written during the Marian Year. It begins from Mary, the woman in whom God's plan for humanity is revealed, then reads the creation accounts to show man and woman as equally the image of God and made for a communion of persons, and traces the wound that sin inflicts on that communion. It treats the way Jesus dealt with women in the Gospels, the two vocations of virginity and motherhood, and the nuptial imagery by which Scripture speaks of Christ and the Church, concluding with the 'feminine genius' the Church needs.