Is religion fair to women?

Last edited Sun Sep 23, 2018, 07:59 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.