Is religion fair to women?

[Soph0571]

Last edited Sun Sep 23, 2018, 08:59 AM - Edit history (1)

This article was prompted by something a colleague said a couple of days ago. A woman of devout faith she espoused the opinion that women should dress modestly and not wear makeup etc because in effect all men are brutes and as a religious woman it was her duty to support men not to sin. I am paraphrasing of course, and this is my interpretation of her words, but it seems to me her interpretation of religious text, even in 2018, is that it is all about the man. Although her position was one that I have little patience with there is also recognition that her belief systems are genuine and heartfelt.

Within the Catholic Church, women can’t be priests, are denied access to reproductive healthcare choices and in the past, they were not too worried about burning women at the stake for being a bit bolshy.

In Islam, in theory, men and women are equal. In practice, maybe not so much. Of course, this is because of the seeming inability to separate tradition from faith within some communities. Then using that faith as a figurative hammer to stamp out female disobedience.

In the Church of England women could only become Bishops in 2015 – still waiting for the first female Arch Bishop. Tick tock.
The religious right, the fundamentalists of all the Abrahamic religions, think all women whores, unless they live in exactly the way they approve of.

Undeniably, within the Christian faith the most commonly quoted bible text used to support the ingrained misogyny that is apparent to all is 1 Corinthians 11:3. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. This verse, written by Paul, who seems to have had a recognised fear of women, should not support 2 thousand years of the subjugation of women within the church.

Is religion fair to women? I suppose if you are willing to be a help-mate, rather than a leader? If you wish to nod your head, rather than have a voice? If you wish to swap meeting your own needs with making sure the men in your life feel ever so important? If you wish to be labelled as other by men, because that is who they really think you are. If you wish to be seen as full off original sin, blamed for all the ills of man, because that is what they really think. If that rocks your boat, then yes religion is fair to ‘you’. For the rest of us. Not so much.

Women have been kept in their place by religion since time immemorial. Maybe it is time for all us to stand up and refuse to accept traditions and norms of behaviour, cloaked in a veneer of ‘religious righteousness’, and then used as a way to dominate and control an entire gender, as passed its sell by date. Every religion does it. And indeed one can very assuredly say that Religion is not fair to women.

[we can do it]

1. No.

[cyclonefence]

2. No.

next question

[Butterflylady]

3. Absolutely not!

[FireandIce59]

4. Without a doubt, No!

[Voltaire2]

5. Women are not equal to men in Islam.

They are instead the wards of their husbands or oldest male relative.

That is actually the status of women in Orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity as well.

[CrispyQ]

6. Man created God to control woman.

So of course it's unfair. That was the intent all along. They put life in a hierarchy & put themselves at the top. To a good number of them, even the unborn are more important than we are.

[Pope George Ringo II]

10. And that's the non-theistic view

The theistic view very often is that god created women to serve man. There's just no version of this which has religion being fair to women.

[MineralMan]

7. No, of course not.

And the men who rule over religion get to use "God" as the reason for their contempt of the sex that gave birth to every one of them. Genesis tells the first story of why women are at fault for everything, and the stories just keep on coming.

It's a great reason to reject religion for being completely illogical. Men owe their very lives and their survival through infancy to women. That fact somehow gets distorted and warped into a lack of respect for women in general.

What a paradox!

[qazplm135]

8. thus far that's a big no

you'd probably need a female dominated religion, which there is little to no evidence of historically.

[Runningdawg]

9. Overall - NO

Being Native I am sure I am biased, but I believe our old ways treat women with the most respect of any religion. We are one of the few whose religious code of conduct was brought by a female prophet.

[Act_of_Reparation]

12. Clarification is needed.

What do you mean by "we" and "our"? There is no singular, universal Native American religion. Different socieities had different traditions, and each differed in respect to the roles and treatment of women.

[Runningdawg]

14. It was a general statement

OVERALL different tribes/societies treated their women much better than any faith today treats theirs.

[Permanut]

11. men have used religion to normalize..

and legitimize the subjugation of women. It works way better if you have God on your side than if you want to dominate another group just because you're bigger. Or stronger, more aggressive, testosterone driven, and just because you think you deserve to be on top, as it were.

[guillaumeb]

13. Recommended. Very well written. eom