Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Women inequalities in religion
Effect of gender inequality
Influences of gender inequality
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Women inequalities in religion
The Future Discussion
My Reaction: When taking this class, I was often surprised at the way women were treated, simply because they were inferior to men in many aspects of the religion. I have never have taken a class that examined how the disparities a women experiences. There was also a lot of stereotypes I had about religions that were proven to be misconceptions. I was overall intrigued to learning about other religions besides Christianity.
My Analysis:
Myself- I found it very difficult to find understand the matter in this class at first. Not only was I very uneducated about my own religion, I had to learn about others. It took a lot of time for me to understand a religion in itself, then learn how women are affected. The first section was on Indigenous
…show more content…
A religion that we studied that proved that change is occurring is the Islamic religions. While all religions are far away from being egalitarian. “There has been a steady rise in overall literacy rates in Egypt, Yemen, and Pakistan are due largely to female education” (Anderson, 242). I think women in religions are still behind for the times that we live in. As our societies change, and become more egalitarian there is the lack in religions. This is due to the fact that religions have been around for thousands of years, and have rarely changed. Now is the time for more to support women in the fight to allow women in higher power. The task for the future, …., is to help the tradition catch up with these realities” (Anderson, 242). While many countries still hinder the progress of women, there are many that have created change. Personally women in religions of the United States, are still disparities that occur. We have made progress electing women into our judicial systems. I believe that if this being done, they are leading by examples. This may have an input in eliminating misconceptions about women, and lead to a better
... is continuing to change, even though I do not agree with how the community used to treat women. A woman being accepted within the community is a big step into gaining respect from men and an even closer step in becoming an equal. This matter of subject is so important to me because I know that women are able to just as much as men can and the fact that, around the world, this is now beginning to be seen as proper provides me with hope that there will no longer be the question of whether or not a female is able to do the job of a male. My hope for this religion is that women will be seen as equals and I believe that the first major step involved women becoming the leader of prayer. Continuing on this journey, I believe that the religion will not need to create any more laws and that it will just become natural for men to give the proper respect to any women.
Throughout almost every time period in history, and in nearly all world cultures women have always been thought of as being lower than men. Most societies are patriarchal and leave men as the powerful decision makers. This idea has only recently started to change more towards equality among the sexes in the last one hundred years or so. However, the religions of Islam, Western Christianity and Byzantine Christianity, although they all showed some semblance of wanting to help out women, all were really just reinforcing and justifying the patriarchal conditions of their cultures. They also went to further probe that different religions do make a difference for women.
Dating back to ancient times, the role of women has never reached true equality with men. We can trace this inequality back to as early as the great Athenian society, where life as we know it today started taking form. On the other side of the inequality, throughout the ancient history of the world, the roles and positions that women have had have improved over time. We can see this tracing time from Athens, to Sparta, the Roman Republic, it's Empire and the rise of Christianity. Although some of theses societies lived parallel in time, each one shows a difference in the way they treat women. Each one did not treat women the same, but the end result compared to the beginning is positive for women.
I have always found the role of women in religion to be a fascinating and diverse subject, varying from community to community. Sometimes, the role of a woman in society is so closely linked to her religious role, that the two are indistinguishable. For example, why is it that some women are expected to upkeep the home and children without question? How are such gender roles assigned? Are these gender roles created by religion and upheld by culture or created by culture and upheld by religion? Where do such social expectations stem from? What does the daily life of a woman in religious groups that hold such expectations look like? And given these questions, is it possible for such roles to evolve? Has social change within gender roles occurred in the context of religion? In order to find the answers to these questions and questions like them, one must seek further insight of religion itself and the social context within which it exists.
Judith Lorder writes in Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, "talking about gender for most people is equivalent of fish talking about water" because gender is so routine that its "assumptions and presuppositions" are taken for granted and left unquestioned and unchallenged. Institutions such as religion has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years and has teachings that are outright sexist, which limits lives of women because it creates the idea that there are just two extremes and no in-between : the virgin or the whore. Men do not have to face persecution or tyranny in instutions and social systems have a patriarchal foundation. Gender inequity operates within instutions because the institutions are in the control of men who are privileged from the gender inequity. Institutions limit women 's lives by excluding women who do not conform to their expectations or follow their "rules." The rules or norms within these instutitions were determined by men which explains why women 's problems or limitations are not a concern for
There are many socially constructed beliefs that help feed gender inequality. One of the primitive and initial source that influences gender inequality is tradition developed by religion.
Today, women share the same equal rights and opportunities as men; nevertheless, that has not invariably been the case. Before the Jazz Age era, gender discrimination between men and women in society was considerably popular. Women were seen as inferior to men. Their jobs were to care for the home, children, and other domesticated duties while men were able to work, get an education, and become doctors or lawyers. Many women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Zora Hurston, to mention a few, seen the unfairness in women's rights and fought for equal rights for women through different movements, efforts, protests, and even marches to abolish women’s rights. As a consequence, women now pursue not only higher education and higher paid jobs/ businesses, but their rights. One of the world’s most controversial issues among churches of today is the role of a woman. Many people are confused about the duty of a woman and how she is supposed to serve God because of history. History taught us to never deny someone of gender, race, or even diversity since he or she has human rights. However, this issue should not be viewed as men versus women because this is not a political issue; instead, it should be viewed as the structural of a church. Women should not be priests, pastors, or even rabbis for God condone women for being priests, pastors, and rabbis as well as proscribed.
Religion is supposed make people feel good about themselves emotionally and spiritually and lead them on the right path, but yet some religions devalue women. Women have been struggling to be treated with respect and equality, but it does not help if religion, the one thing that people actually call on for guidance, puts women down and take away basic rights. Religion expresses that women are beneficial, but also that women are secondary to men. Yes, there are many different types of religions out there in the world, but in the various types of religious scriptures, it is conveyed that women will never be equal to men.
Throughout history, men have been given superiority and dominance over women in the majority of religious settings. There have been few religions and cultures that do the opposite and see their women as having superiority and dominance over men. On one hand, the cultures and religions that see men as being dominant are patriarch. On the other hand, the cultures and religions that see women as being dominant are matriarch. Every religion and culture has an impact on whether societies tend to follow a matriarch, or a patriarch lifestyle. Hindu and Islam religions and cultures are two religions that tend to follow a patriarch lifestyle, but with few exceptions.
The Torah, in general, does not exactly alleviate the situation of women. Many Jewish feminists argue that a big chunk of the misogynistic views of men stem from the exclusivity of God as male. Judith Plaskow says, “There is the fact that we address God as he. And it is not just that we use the masculine pronoun in the absence of neuter ones – we image him in male terms. Thus he is King, Lord, Shepard, Father, etc.” She goes on to mention the incredulous arguments against the ordainment of women. Arguments that stated things like because a Rabbi or Minister is in effect a Godly figure, and since God is used in exclusively male terms, it is not fitting that a woman should take a role in the clergy.
...major religion’s beginnings at or around 2500 B.C., and to see the vast amount of time that has elapsed to get to the point at which we are at in today’s society, is a bit discomforting. To move though 4500 years and still not have gender equality is kind of surprising. One could take consolation in the fact that a great majority of this progression towards gender equity has occurred in the last 100 years. Things in society look as if we are on the right track now.
...dview as much as solidified it in different terms. Coming in, I did not know what a worldview was. I learned not only what a worldview is, but also how to determine and classify my own. It turned out that I had a mainly Christian Worldview but had never put it in the terms defined by Cosgrove. The class did not change any ideas or beliefs that I hold, but actually challenged and strengthened them by making me critically think about every aspect of my worldview and presenting new ways to look at things. I loved being able to see how my worldview connected on so many levels with the overall Christian Worldview.
I was in definite need of a course like this because before I started taking this class I had no idea of the simple concept of the different beliefs between Hinduism and Judaism. I had heard of the different religions vaguely in high school, but was never actually taught about them. I didn’t even know that Jews did not eat pig because they thought it was a descendant of the devil. If I weren’t to know that, somewhere down the road I might have offered one of my Jewish friends a ham sandwich and that would have been a very embarrassing situation. I now believe that I am a better informed American about fellow man in other parts of the world, but I still hope to learn more about them because I feel that we have only scratched the surface in class.
To remain competitive and employable in the twenty-first century workplace, society today must conform to the changing demands. Technology is one of the principal driving forces of the future; it is transforming our lives and shaping our future at rates unprecedented in history, with profound implications, which we cannot even begin to see or understand.