How on Earth can establishing a powerless, segregated all-women consultation group be progress? Just more gender-apartheid! 

The real progress was JPII putting up a simplistic and easily-overturned argument against women priests, "the 12 apostles were male," and dropping the argument that only males could image Jesus, a male. Women are members of the Christ and can image it. Now it is up to Francis to sweep away all the remaining 'in persona Christi Capitis' clericalism, which holds that priests are like Jesus the High Priest, and act in his "person," based on a sentence in Aquinas and the Vulgate's translation of 2 Co 2:10, a translation now restored in the NAB/NABRE Bible on the Vatican and US Bishops' websites to read "in the presence of Christ," not "in the person of." Yes, priests have authority, but they are not Jesus-representatives. There is only one High Priest and he is Jesus. Your pastor is not Jesus or even a stand-in for Jesus. Clericalism idolizes priests and maleness.