Religion promotes patriarchy

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that religion promotes the idea that men are superior to women — that men naturally have a deity-like status, and that women are there as machines to facilitate them and produce children and create the homes around them. The claim is not that every believer holds this view, but that religious authority hands it down as doctrine rather than offering it up for argument. Some religious texts are utilized to convey the idea that women are temptresses, and sinful, and will bring man to disobey God: Eve, for example, whose story locates the origin of human wrongdoing in a woman's act. From that starting point, proponents argue, an entire social arrangement follows. The idea that women are economically and politically inferior has become the norm in religions promoting patriarchal values, and often secular feminists describe religion as the "rulebook for patriarchy". Under these values, women's bodies are controlled, and so are their lives; women are to be owned rather than seen as an equal partner. What makes this incompatible with feminism, on this account, is not only the content of the rules but their source, since a hierarchy presented as divinely ordained is not open to the kind of revision feminism requires — to contest it is to contest God rather than a human institution. The historical record is offered as evidence that such arrangements travel rather than arising naturally everywhere. When Native Americans were colonized, the colonialists were shocked at the idea of Indian women being autonomous in their sexual will, and at their ability to gain a divorce when needed, with the ability to engage in polygamy. Religion and patriarchy were imposed upon these communities together, which suggests the subordination arrived with the religion rather than preceding it. Because religion promotes patriarchy in this way — as doctrine, as social norm, and as something carried by conquest — proponents conclude that religion is not compatible with feminism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

When religion is asserted as a basis for patriarchy, it veils the real problem, patriarchy. Patriarchy does not exist solely because of religion, it simply exists. Even if religion is used as one vessel for asserting the notion, the fact that patriarchy prevails in secular, liberal societies, show that it is not a religious problem, it is simply a long-standing problem. These inequalities are institutional and present in modern secular society, ranging from gender pay gaps, to access to posts that are traditionally regarded as male. An example of misogyny in modern society was when an employee of PwC was sent home for wearing flat shoes rather than heels. Women still face abuse from their partners, and suffer gender-based violence. Pinning patriarchy to religion is not the answer.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Religion" is treated as one thing with one teaching. Traditions differ, and within each the reading is contested — the story of Eve, for instance, is read by some as an account of shared culpability rather than of female fault — so the premise generalises from selected interpretations. [Rejecting P2] A description offered by critics is not evidence: calling religion "the rulebook for patriarchy" states the conclusion, and the premise does not establish that religious teaching produced women's economic and political subordination rather than being enlisted to justify it. [Rejecting P3] The colonial case supports a different claim, since what was imposed was the whole apparatus of a colonising society — its law, property regime and family structure alongside its religion. The counter adds that patriarchy persists in secular states, from pay gaps to gender-based violence, which is hard to explain if religion is its source.