“Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths, creating an environment in which violations against women are justified,” former President Jimmy Carter noted in a speech last month to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia. “The belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God,” Mr. Carter continued, “gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo.”
Mr. Carter, who sees religion as one of the “basic causes of the violation of women’s rights,” is a member of The Elders, a small council of retired leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela. The Elders are focusing on the role of religion in oppressing women, and they have issued a joint statement calling on religious leaders to “change all discriminatory practices within their own religions and traditions.”
“The Elders are not attacking religion as such,” noted Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and United Nations high commissioner for human rights. But she added, “We all recognized that if there’s one overarching issue for women it’s the way that religion can be manipulated to subjugate women.”
Kristof notes that there is historic precedent for the use of religious texts to justify discrimination as this occurred with the institution of slavery. He also notes that religious people played a key role in the abolitionist movement. With co-author (and wife) Sheryl WuDunn, Kristof expands this argument in a new book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Together they make the case that removing barriers to women's rights is a key to economic progress for the developing world by allowing women entry into an expanded and more competetive workforce.
--Ballard Burgher
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