Home > Feminism
4.3 Effect on religion
Feminism has had a great effect on many aspects of religion. In liberal branches of Protestant Christianity, women are now ordained as clergy, and in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, women are now ordained as rabbis and cantors. Within these Christian and Jewish groups, woman have gradually become more nearly equal to men by obtaining positions of power; their perspectives are now sought out in developing new statements of belief. These trends, however, have been resisted within Islam and Roman Catholicism. All the mainstream denominations of Islam forbid Muslim women from being recognized as religious clergy and scholars in the same way that Muslim men are accepted. Liberal movements within Islam have nonetheless persisted in trying to bring about feminist reforms in Muslim societies. Roman Catholicism has historically been seen to abuse women (for example, the Magdalen Asylum system in Ireland) -- one example given is that does not allow women to hold any positions as clergy except as nuns; they are excluded from entering the main Church hierarchy.
Feminism also has had an important role in creating new forms of religion. Neopagan religions especially tend to emphasise the importance of Goddess spirtuality, and question what they regard as traditonal religion's downgrading of women. In particular Dianic Wicca is a religion whose origins lie within radical feminism. Discussion of these views leads to critics of the view that traditional religions degrade women, suggest examining positive Christian and Islamic views and ideals of Mary, Islamic views of Fatima Zahra, and especially to the Catholic belief in the Coredemptrix , as counterexamples. However, there has been further discussion in response to this. With respect to Mary especially, it has been argued that she, with her status as mother and virgin, and as traditionally the main role model for women, sets women up to aspire to an impossible ideal, and also thus has negative consequences on a woman's sexuality.
There is a separate article on God and gender; it discusses how monotheistic religions reconcile their theologies with contemporary gender issues, and how modern feminism has influenced the theology of many religions.
5 Worldwide statistics
Despite advances made by women, who have successfully created change towards equality in the West, there is still a very long way to go to true equality, according to those who provide the following statistics:
- Women own only 1 percent of the world's wealth, and earn 10 percent of the world's income, despite making up 49 percent of the population.
- When childcare and housework are taken into consideration, women work longer than men in both the industrialised and developing world, (by 20 percent in the industrialised world, and 30 percent in the developing world).
- The number of women in all of the world's legislative bodies are disproportionate to the number of men. In 1985, Finland had the largest percentage of women in national legislature at approximately 32 percent (P. Norris, Women's Legislative Participation in Western Europe, West European Politics). Currently, Sweden has the highest number of women at 42 percent. The United States has just 11 percent. The world average is just 9 percent. ( Wales, while not an independent country has 50% of its members being women.)
- In much of the third world, women are considered as effectively property, and have no legal rights in practice. Millions of women are expected to undergo female circumcision, a form of genital mutilation. In some areas, rape is used as a sentence for a crime, even crimes not committed by the women themselves. (See, for example, the case of Mukhtaran Bibi.)
