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Religion Feminist Persp

A-Level Sociology

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11 views7 pages

Religion Feminist Persp

A-Level Sociology

Uploaded by

hehelife99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Feminist

Perspective

UNIT 6: RELIGION
General position
■ Religion supports patriarchal oppression
– Non-feminists such as Giddens have also commented on the disadvantaged
position of women in religion
■ Karen Armstrong: though women have gained headway in other areas of life, they
fail to make any significant progress in religion
■ Women continue to be excluded from key roles in many religions (most of the major
religions)
■ Fang-Long Shih: the two main approaches are radical feminist and liberal feminist
Radical ■ A radical transformation is needed to remove
this significant source of inequality

Feminist ■ De Beauvoir: religion acts for women the same


way it does for the working classes

Perspectives
– “Man has the great advantage of having
a God endorse the code he write.”
– “(T)he fear of god will repress any
impulse towards revolt in the
downtrodden female.”
– In modern societies religion performs a
deceptive role: the submissive woman
(mother) is seen as closer to God
(compensation)
– Like in Marx, religion offers women hope
of salvation in the afterlife for their
suffering in this life
– Women also play a critical role in
sustaining and passing on religious belief
■ The goddess religions:
– Karen Armstrong: the prevalence of goddess faiths and cults prior to the birth
of monotheistic religions where deities took on a male character
– Unlike De Beauvoir, these radical approaches do not call for the abolition of
religion but rather with their replacement with feminist/goddess religions
■ Mary Daly: sex role socialization is critical in gaining the ‘consent of the victim’
– Daly points to the language and symbolism as the key to establishing male
power within religion (God the father)
■ Carol P. Christ: rediscovery of Goddess religions, naturalist faith, thea-logy
– Shih argues that Christ’s approach is difficult to evaluate since it lacks
empirical data (which is not necessarily gendered)
■ Nawal El Saadawi: sees religion as just one aspect in a wider patriarchal structure
that needs to be overthrown
– Points to female circumcision as one instance of a practice attributed to Islam
yet not supported by Islam
■ Saadawi continues:
– A re-interpretation of the story of Osiris and Isis will show Isis as more powerful
(being able to resurrect Osiris rather than Osiris’s divine ability to come back
from the dead)
– The story of fall from heaven can be read as Adam being Eve’s instrument to
increase her own knowledge
■ Evaluation:
– Have ignored the progress made by women within religions to challenge the
patriarchy
– Not all religions are oppressive of women
– Some radical feminist research is not backed up by empirical evidence
Liberal Feminist Perspectives
■ Fang-Long Shih: liberal feminist have an “and agenda of accommodation” by
transforming existing patriarchal religious structures
■ Jean Holm: women have a critical role to play in most religions but this is generally
subordinated to the role of men
– However not all religions are wholly oppressive (e.g. Badawi points to how
Muslim women keep their own family name after marriage)
– Kawaljit Kaur-Singh: Sikh gurus pleaded the cause of women
– Holm suggests that there is significant place within religions for women to
improve their positions
■ Rinaldo: women have played major roles in piety movements in various parts of the
world:
– They have allowed women to escape dislocating (globalization) changes and
define modernity in their own terms
– Acting for these movements gives women a source of agency and identity
■ Rinaldo further points to reemergence of veiling by Muslim women as a source of
reasserting their identity

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