Women and religion

“Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer. So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women?”

Thus starts The New York Times columnist Fred R. Conrad’s commentary on how the inferior status of women has been perpetuated by religions. The column is being circulated through the internet by and to feminist groups advocating gender equality.

Conrad’s hypothesis is that abuses committed against women “arise out of a social context in which women are, often, second-class citizens. That’s a context that religions have helped shape, and not pushed hard to change.”

Among these abuses, along with more banal injustices, like slapping a girlfriend or paying women less for their work, are justifying mass rapes (by warlords in Congo who cite the Scriptures for such acts), or burning of brides in India as part of a Hindu ritual, or Afghan thugs throwing acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school.

Conrad writes of former US President Jimmy Carter’s speech last month to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia, in which he said “women are being prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified.”

“The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God,” Mr. Carter said, “gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo.”

According to Conrad, Mr. Carter, who sees religion as one of the “basic causes of the violation of women’s rights,” is a member of The Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. The Elders are focusing on the role of religion in oppressing women, and they have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to “change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions.”

The Elders are neither irreligious nor rabble-rousers. They include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and they begin their meetings with a moment for silent prayer.

“The Elders are not attacking religion as such,” Mary Robinson is quoted by Conrad. Robinson is the former president of Ireland and the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. “We all recognized that if there’s one overarching issue for women it’s the way that religion can be manipulated to subjugate women.”

Those who seek “a theology of discrimination,” writes Conrad, can easily find it in the Koran and the Bible. The New Testament quotes St. Paul (in 2 Timothy) as saying that women “must be silent.” Deuteronomy declares that if a woman does not bleed on her wedding night, “the men of her town shall stone her to death.” An Orthodox Jewish prayer thanks God, “who has not made me a woman.” The Koran stipulates that a woman shall inherit less than a man, and that a woman’s testimony counts for half a man’s.

Paradoxically, writes Conrad, the churches in Africa that have done the most to empower women have been conservative ones led by evangelicals and especially Pentecostals. In particular, Pentecostals encourage women to take leadership roles, and for women this is the first time they have been trusted with authority and found their opinions respected. In rural Africa, Pentecostal churches are becoming a significant force to emancipate women.

Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior, writes Conrad. “The Elders are right that religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.” –Domini M. Torrevillas (The Philippine Star)