Gender is the state of reference on which status differences are based, unlike sex, which is biological; gender is a social code of conduct specifying the social and cultural roles that men and women are expected to follow, making Gender Roles a very controversial topic.
Images of women, mostly old statuettes representing women whose wombs and hips are extremely exaggerated, all dating to the Stone Age, outnumber images of men throughout evolution and history. This has led to speculation about the place of women in society and religious faiths. Some have argued that these female figurines signify, or once signified, the existence of a prominent female deity identified as the “Earth Mother” or the “Mother Goddess”, it was been suggested that, unlike today, women played a considerably more important, if not dominant, role in Paleolithic society and that possibly, a matriarchy existed.
Religion has existed for as long as man has, with the purpose to help men and women believe in a superior being to explain the existence of life. With so many different faiths and religions, men and women play different roles within what is permitted by each one of them.
Women have always had lower status than men, but the extent of the gap between the sexes varies across cultures and time. All of the major world religions “diminish” women to some degree. It is not a secret that women have historically been “put down”, so to speak, when it comes to how they are treated and viewed in religion along the centuries. There has always been tension in this topic. In most religions they are considered lowly. The men in various high religious positions maintain that the women are not inferior to men but that their God has divided the duties of men and women ...
... middle of paper ...
...elieve that the creation of everything in the universe was brought into being by God’s command. The Quran says that both men and women are equal before God in their religious duties. It is believed that men are the maintainers and protectors of women and women are expected to stay at home and care for the home and children. Muslim women were not allowed to receive an education. They are told that they have to be modest and not portray a view of sexuality therefore required to wear loose clothing so as to not attract men’s attention. Polygamy is promoted in the Islamic religion, however, it can only be practiced by the male.
In doing research for this paper, it can be noted that the women played the same type of role in all of these religions. Women were expected to be the homemakers and caregivers. They were expected to bear the children and be submissive to men.
To begin with, gender roles are the social and behavioral norms that are generally seen appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship. Gender roles that society has created today reflect the way that people have acted upon in the past. When the idea of gender roles in our society comes up, originally the first thing that would come to mind were the roles that were expected of women. Howe...
After the first part of the Hughes chapter on Middle Eastern Muslim women, the emphasis shifts, from Quranic doctrine regarding women to how Muslim law and scholarship have interpreted the Quran’s direct admonitions to women. However, this shift is unfortunately subtle. The authors fail to make a clear distinction between the Quran, a sacred text believed to be the verbatim word of God; and Muslim law, which was formulated by (male) Muslim jurists who consulted the Quran and whose consensus was later declared infallible (Ahmed 58). Such a distinction is necessary because the Quran itself is vastly different from a legal document; Ahmed observes in “Early Islam and the Position of Women” that “Quranic precepts consist mainly of broad, general propositions chiefly of an ethical nature, rather than specific legalistic formulations” (59). Indeed, the Qura...
“Gender” refers to the cultural construction of whether one is female, male, or something else (Kottak 2013: 209). Typically, based on your gender, you are culturally required to follow a particular gender norm, or gender role. Gender roles are the tasks and activities a culture assigns to the sexes (Kottak 213: 209). The tasks and activities assigned are based upon strongly, seized concepts about male and female characteristics, or gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes…are oversimplified but strongly upheld ideas about bout the characteristics of males and females (Kottak 2013: 209).
..., those belonging to monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam tended to give women the least freedom; possibly because the single divine entity in these religions, God, was male and encouraged male oriented worship. Polytheistic religions like those in Uruk, Egypt, Greece and Rome allowed women a greater ability to decide their own future, whether to an extreme degree, like the complete legal equality of Egypt, or to a lesser one, as in the housewives of Greece, most likely because the pantheon of gods included powerful female figures that provided an example for female believers to follow and male ones to observe. Monotheistic religions forbade women accumulating power by participating in masculine activities, whereas polytheistic religions encouraged women to meet men as level a playing field could be found in a decidedly sexist environment.
Similarly, the Islamic religion disempowers women by creating specific roles for them. Islam considers women as mere tools for propagation of life with the ability to bring forth a child being attributed to the man. Women were to swathe their heads as a means of subordination to the males. This brought about inferiority and superiority complex among women and men, with marginalization of women. Islamic regions, especially during the antiquity, restricted the roles of women to cooking and procreation. Men would assume leadership positions. The cultural beliefs became a mirror of the Islamic doctrines. Therefore, any person deviating from the be...
The word gender refers to a general classification of human beings into male and female with socially and culturally constructed characteristics, behaviors, attributes and roles preconceived and labelled as appropriate for each class. The society and culture today have placed human beings in a box which to a large extent dictates how we act in the world.
Women have not been treated equally in history. They were not given the same rights and opportunities as men. However, religion was a way the women could get an education and power in their spiritual lives. What was a choice women had to get educated or involved? Church, or convents being an only option for most women, it was the only possibility for them to have an education and control over their minds. I believe that there are a lot of authors that would agree that women turned to the church or religion frequently to escape home lives. In a lot of readings there are parents that give away their children to the churches early on because the parents think it is a better option for their child’s lives. Also if the parents did not have enough
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.
In the Paleolithic era, men and women equally contributed towards survival. Men and women were responsible for hunting and gathering respectively. Additionally, the birth rate was very low and there was no need for a large population during this time. Only a small group of people was needed for hunting and picking food from the environment. When agriculture was introduced about 10,000 years ago, it caused patriarchy due to the higher value men obtained due to ownership of land as well as being responsible for more of the labor. There was also a huge need for a larger population. The output of this seemed to favor male gods over female goddesses, and women found their freedom being severely limited.
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.
While sex refers the biological characteristics that make up a person, their gender is determined by the behaviors and attitudes considered “proper” by society according to their sex.
Elizabeth A. Johnson draws attention to how, despite being considered equal in Genesis, women had their worth ignored “Consistently subordinated and demeaned in the theories, symbols, rituals,
The role of women in religious scripture dictates an inferior position in society. Beginning with the creation of Adam and then Eve, as his helpmate. Her purpose was that Adam would not be lonely. This origin provides the ground work for inequality of genders on the basis of religious scripture. The roles prescribed determined that women should be in a subordinate position to man. The female role and relationship with God is defined by the various books of the Old and New Testaments, the reported actions of Jesus Christ, and finally the Qur'an.
You might have heard at some time or the other that Islam teaches that women are "inferior" and "unequal" to men. Women are described as weak, inferior, inherently evil (it is the nature of woman to promote fitnah (mischief)), we have deficient intellectual capabilities and are spiritually lacking. Furthermore, these evaluations have been used to claim that women are unsuitable for performing certain tasks, or for functioning in some ways in society.
According to Crapo, (2013), “Gender defines the social statuses and roles into which people are socialized based on cultural concepts about the sexes” (sec. 5.1). Society considers the sex of a person and then determines how they should act and the roles they will play. Humans are considered to be male or female, and their roles or gender is determined by the society in which they live. Cultural differences shape the way that women and men are perceived in their social environment, and these differences also influence how gender is