Religion oppresses women

The argument

The charge here begins from a tension proponents see at the centre of religious authority. Religion purports to be an ethical compass — a source of guidance on how people should treat one another — and yet many religions are used to oppress women, often by the very people who hold that authority. The objection is not that believers fall short of their teachings but that the teachings themselves are invoked to authorise the treatment. The examples offered are severe and span several traditions. Women are raped in conflict by men citing scriptures from religious books as they do it. Widows have been burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands, a practice within Hinduism justified by interpretations drawn from a story. Women who wish to educate themselves, or who reject a man, have had acid thrown in their faces. In each case a religious warrant is claimed for the act, and that claim is what proponents argue makes this a problem about religion rather than a problem merely occurring among religious people. Underlying these, on this account, is a more general idea religion has helped to shape: that women are second-class citizens, because God favours man. Once that hierarchy is treated as divinely ordained it does not stay confined to doctrine. It has been used to justify the idea that abusing a girlfriend or a wife is acceptable, and that paying women less than men for their work is acceptable too — ordinary, daily inequalities defended by appeal to a settled order. Proponents argue that this religiously justified inequality is what perpetuates the more violent forms already described, since the violence proceeds from the same premise. Because religion oppresses women in these ways, the argument concludes, religion is not compatible with feminism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is not religion that is oppressive to women, it is the interpretation of religious texts that oppresses women. Over centuries, religious texts have shaped culture, and it is the misinterpretation of these texts that have given power to patriarchy leading to the oppression of women. Institutions accept and continue this trend, and this is why it is significant for women to take leading roles in these institutions to educate and challenge these ideas. In the Bible, there are many references to love, tolerance, and respect, and these are gender-neutral. Some argue that religious texts seek to empower women, but have been misinterpreted. For example, there is a verse in the Esephians that asks man and woman submit to each other, this has been misinterpreted to benefit one sex. Islam is often perceived as oppressing women, however in Islam, argues Sheikh Yusuf Mugisha, empowering women is one of the basics of the faith. Women are the pillars of the family, and their economic and social development is key. The reference to protecting women is the only constraint, aimed at ensuring the safety of women when they travel alone and far, it does not mean that they should be forbidden from working or studying. The participation of women in religion will allow these misgivings to be changed, as religion is not oppressive, it is read and constructed in that way institutionally.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The examples describe uses made of scripture rather than what scripture requires; on the counter's account it is the interpretation, and the institutions that maintain it, that produce the oppression, and the same texts are read by others as commanding respect and mutual submission. [Rejecting P2] Traditions differ on whether men are favoured, and religious authority has also been invoked in support of women's education, property and refuge, so the premise generalises from particular readings to religion as such. [Rejecting P3] Where religious authority has been used to justify inequality, the premise does not show the relation is causal rather than a prevailing culture finding sanction in whatever authority was available — and the existence of religious feminists counts directly against the incompatibility the conclusion asserts.