Which religion treats women the worst?

[AsMenDclaredWomenTheirInferior]

Untenable
is the idea
you can support a male supremacist ideology
whilst saying you still believe in equality for women and girls.

Adviceplease - of course. Where I grew up white people were a minority and for this reason the vast majority of my friends were Muslim girls. I follow a fair few blogs by feminist Muslim women and can certainly confirm from the threads on these blogs whereby both men and women are commenting, the angels cursing is still used by men a lot to coerce women into having sex. I also read the statistic on rape in Pakistan is 47% of women. This was from a blog about a woman who’d been beaten black and blue on her honeymoon by her husband for refusing him sex and the men in her family were on her husband’s side. It was an awful read.

I also read the statistic on rape in Pakistan is 47% of women. This was from a blog about a woman who’d been beaten black and blue on her honeymoon by her husband for refusing him sex and the men in her family were on her husband’s side. It was an awful read.

This is terrible, however Pakistan is a secular country, many Pakistani Muslims have traditions linked to Hinduism, they are definitely more cultural than Islamic. They also incidentally have the highest usage of porn.

To add, I have noticed the professional and educated women of all religions (I know Muslim and Christian women mainly) are not remotely oppressed, the less educated ones are more likely to suffer abuse.

advice. I agree - that is what I've noticed too.

There are certainly some blinkered views. The Catholic Church doesn’t have laws on abortion or contraception.....it has teachings. The teaching of the Catholic Church is actually that God created all people equal - man and woman. The belief is that in marriage the two (man and woman) are equal parts of the union, they complement each other and whilst they tend to bring different things to the marriage there is absolutely no suggestion that woman are only required to cook, clean and look after the men folk. I am not oppressed. I can think of a few women who have been but that is about individual men rather than Catholicism per se. Most of my Catholic friends are not oppressed ‘good little homemakers’ ; they are doctors, teachers, lawyers, CEOs, artists, social workers and whatever else they choose to be.

@Adviceplease360
Do you live in a cave or something?

I have worked with them, lived in the same house as them, socialized with them.
One of my Muslim friends lived with her mother and sister, her father moved out to live with her mothers sister, nice.
My friends mother was going blind and had other physical problems and her brother moved back into the family home after he got divorced and he demanded they cook & clean for him & do all his laundry because he was now the man of the house and he threatened them with violence to make sure they complied.

That is not an exception in the Muslim community it's the rule.
The Muslim community do not like the thought of Muslim women being independent and living without men's guidance because men are special little bunnies, ain't they?
We call it Men's vanity and an over bloated sense of their own self worth!

Some real examples of rape culture on this page!

Is the view of those women living that life less valid?

Yes because they do not have the experience to gauge their life. If you have lived all your life in a prison then how can you know what it is like not to be in prison?

If you try to leave you have (and this applies tot he men too) a basic education and few skills that can be applied in the outside world.

It's a bit like when North Koreans defect, many struggle to adapt to South Korea, you go from having everything about your life dictated to. 'get on eith it'.

As for which is worse. I believe the majority have been developed exactly to keep women 'in their place'.

Most of my Catholic friends are not oppressed ‘good little homemakers’ ; they are doctors, teachers, lawyers, CEOs, artists, social workers and whatever else they choose to be.

Unless they want to be a priest.

I think women being happy within their religion depends on one of two things: how liberal their immediate culture is in interpreting the religion, or how good they are at deluding themselves that they have power and autonomy.

I don’t mean the latter bit in a patronising “they’re so brainwashed” way because I think all of us whether in religious or secular cultures are brainwashed and that isn’t a sign of stupidity at all but of simply negotiating your way in a culture without going insane.

We all find rationales to explain the world around us. If we didn’t we’d go bonkers.

Yes, I live in a cave.

It's good that you have decided all religious women are oppressed based on your one Muslim friend. Should I assume anybody with the word 'as' in the their username is an idiot based on your posts? No, because that would be stupid.

Is you 'friend' educated?

I stand by my previous comment, educated women of all religions tend to then understand their religion and not allow men to dictate it for them or impose it on them.

Yes because they do not have the experience to gauge their life. If you have lived all your life in a prison then how can you know what it is like not to be in prison?

Thank God we have you to enlighten us then eh?

Talking down to women of faith helps no one. Religious women, (I include myself in that) are sometimes oppressed and accept it because they are uneducated, or because their afraid. Their abusers justify their actions by using their books. In the same way, a woman is killed by a partner or ex partner once a week (I think), who is blamed for that? It's not broken down by religion and its unlikely they are religious or it would be splashed all over the papers.

Religions especially the three abrahamic ones are massively under attack. Jews, Muslims and Christians are literally made a joke off and are made to look oppressive and backwards, but women don't let go of their faith. Stereotyping an entire community as the op has done completely wrongly just goes to show how ignorant people still are.

My sister was a Baha'i. She was fondof telling me how good its treatment of women was. The religious elders still told her to go back to her abusive husband because marriage was sacred. In practice it's every bit as patriarchal as the rest.

sashh by your very arguement women who do not have a religious faith cannot have a valid perspective of the lives of women who do as assumedly you haven’t lived the lives of those you wish to ‘ save from oppression’.

‘few skills and a basic education if they choose to leave ‘ mmmmnnn doesn’t come much more patronising, does it? Those skills might well include degrees and postgraduate qualifications in medicine, STEM subjects, dentistry, teaching, HR, languages, international development, nursing, physiotherapy, military strategy, literature or fine arts.

Add on to those the emotional intelligence and flexibility to maintain committed and equal relationships, the skills to support communities and it’s looking like women who have a faith aren’t doing too badly. Hey, some of us can even swim and dance.

I think and will try to dig out the research that shows those with faith are happier too.

It’s not the research I was thinking of but
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/12136531/Religion-can-make-you-happier-official-figures-suggest.html

Those nasty religions making people happy and protecting people from depression, eh?

Islam, per the Qu’ran affords women more rights than any other Abrahamic religion. Women can inherit, women can divorce, women can give evidence in court against a man (yes in Qu’ranic law 2 women = 1 man, but in old Christian and Jewish law there was no parity at all).

What Islam’s issue is, is that it hasn’t had it’s reformation / enlightenment period yet. That is what Saudi (and Prince Mohammed) is trying to achieve - they want to create a dominant form of Islam which will take over the rest of the sects.

Islam needs to be condensed, so it can be regulated. Too many sects right now to police the education of Imams.

Crumbs1: "The Catholic Church doesn’t have laws on abortion or contraception.....it has teachings."

Except in countries where the Catholic Church is a powerful influence, those things are illegal. See e.g. the Republic of Ireland from its inception to just a few years ago. Abortion is still illegal there of course.

No religion treats women badly, it’s the traditions and the culture of the people who practice the religion who treat women badly - because women are just treated badly everywhere.

If you’re going to base things on what is written in holy books and their analysis - Torah, Talmud, Koran, Hadith, Bible etc etc etc then the best religion for women is Sikhism as the Guru Granth Sahib explicity states how everyone including women are equal.

The worst are Judaism and Christianity. Read Texts of Terror by Phyllis Tribble as a good starting point for a feminist analysis of the misogyny included in the OT in particular. Islam is quite progressive in terms of the treatment of women in comparison.

Problem is that religion is only one tiny part of how women are treated and valued. For example, the Christian Right, which will elect child abusers like Roy Moore and stamp all over a woman’s right to body autonomy, is just as misogynistic as some of the more strict traditions regarding women in Islam, and is just as comparable to the Jewish women left in limbo as they can’t divorce if their husbands say no.

Religion is a handy excuse for the patriarchy to keep women as a sub class of humans.

A very difficult question to answer because it relies not just on the religion but also on how that religion is manifested in both the cultural norms and the legal framework of the countries it’s practised in.

So for example Christianity doesn’t cover itself in glory but in the UK (which doesn’t have separation of church and state) things are better because the rule of law overrules religious practices that discriminate.

Countries where religion and politics are more strongly linked tend to be more towards the ‘total basketcase’ end of things (Pakistan, Saudi etc.)

There are still some small pockets of matrilineal societies in places like Tibet but in most of these they are matrilineal rather than matriarchal and they tend to have a more animist type religion.

Monotheism seems rather bad for women.

@Adviceplease360

"Is you 'friend' educated?
I stand by my previous comment, educated women of all religions tend to then understand their religion and not allow men to dictate it for them or impose it on them"

Oh yes, my friend is educated and she won an Art award and was offered a chance to go to Europe to display and explain her art and meet other Artists.

And OMG were her family pleased she won? did they pat her on her back? Did they say "Oh yes you go to Europe on your own without a male Muslim escort overseeing what you are doing?

Oh no they weren't happy, but at the point she won her award her family were in melt down, so she went anyway.

No she didn't get a pat on her back but if she had been born male, they would have fallen over themselves to congratulate him.
I don't think you know the Muslim community at all or what goes on behind closed doors and for you to say females don't let the men impose their anti female religion on them and restrict them from doing what they want to do is purely a fantasy on your part.
When females are surrounding by those who are baying for their blood if they don't comply to their rules, choice then is an anathema.

Sikhism only provides equal rights to ‘women who become male’ - they wear a turban and are permitted to work and dress as a man does, but I don’t know any Sikh woman who has done this and been able to marry a Sikh man.

I know a Sikh woman who wears a turban. She's married with kids. I don't know if she works as I don't know her very well at all.

Wearing a turban is often a very serious undertaking, and sometimes the only way some families let their daughters go to uni etc. These girls can’t cut their hair, wear make up, or remove facial hair - I know meet a lot of women like this as I volunteer at various Gurudwaras on Langat days, and seeing one who is married is rare (those who are tend to marry out of religion).

Most religions say women on periods are unclean, even in Japan a women cannot climb some sacred mountain because we have periods. Jesus thought his power drained when a man pointed out a women on her period touched him, i think they all have weird views on women.

Hackmum yes, you are right there are laws in some Catholic countries that follow Catholic doctrine - but they are laws of the country not the church.
The Repubic of Ireland has a democratically elected government, so the church could have less influence if people used their votes to reduce it. There are many Catholic women who are zealous and right wing - more so probably than many men. They are as entitled to their views as any left wing liberal feminist. We might think their view is wrong but it is a legitimate view.