Women's Relationship with Religion: Analysis of Religious Traditions

This essay examines the complex and diverse relationship between women and organized religions, exploring the spectrum of participation and exclusion across various religious denominations. It defines patriarchy and its historical influence on limiting women's roles and rights within religious contexts, including the impact of viewing women's bodily functions as detrimental to religious practice. The essay further analyzes strategies employed by activists to address challenging verses in religious texts, providing examples from Christianity and Hinduism, and proposes strategies for creating more inclusive religious spaces, such as interfaith discussions and personal dialogues. Finally, the essay highlights noteworthy points, including women's higher interest in religion, historical examples of greater religious freedom for women, and a comparison of religious rights for women in different historical contexts, all derived from the provided video source and related research.

Running head: WOMEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RELIGION
WOMEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RELIGION
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Author Note

1WOMEN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RELIGION
1. Diversity and women’s relationships with organized religion
The position of women is diverse concerning their relationship with the various organized
religions. The spectrum refers to the various ways in which women are both allowed to
participate and not allowed to participate in religious rituals based on the kind of practices that
are prevalent across religious sects and sub-sects. The spectrum focuses on the fact that while
some of the denominations of religions such as Christianity provide good scope for women to
become higher authorities of religion, other sects are more opposed to the idea (Women &
Religion, 2019). Similar situations exists in other religions as well. It can be seen that in many
cases women are actually encouraged more to participate in religion while in other cases there
are significant barriers that are present.
2. Patriarchy and its roles
Patriarchy refers to a social or administrative order where men hold most of the important
positions of authority while women are greatly excluded from them. Patriarchy is also a social
order where the eldest male member of the family is considered the head of the family. Despite
patriarchy being more related to the social order, it has influence in religion has been greater than
any other influence. Patriarchy has tried to ensure that the religious rights and powers are
concentrated more in the hands of men (Klingorova & Havlíček, 2015). Women’s participation
has been limited by considering their bodily functions like menstruation phases as beings impure
and hence detrimental to religious practice. More such issues have been used to limit the
participation of women in religion.

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3. Strategies utilized for difficult verses of religious texts
There are several religious text that actually are against providing certain rights to women
in various religious scriptures. The activists are now using other verses from the same texts to
counter the claims of the religionists or extremists. The activists have found that there are verses
or stories in almost all religions that portray women’s rights that are actually higher in value than
the rights of women provided many centuries later and even in the 19th or 20th centuries. These
verses are from the very same texts that have other verses that can be interpret to be against the
right of women. In Christianity, the examples of the queens mentioned in the Old Testament are
being provided. In Hinduism, the female priests of the old Vedic age are being provided as
examples.
4. Strategies for more inclusive religious spaces for women
Two important strategies that can be used are firstly, having interfaith discussions in
regards to women’s position in religion and secondly, having personal dialogues at home with
the participation of men and women in a family. In the first case the women could put their case
forward more effectively. This way in a setting of rational discussions both men and women
could gather implications that would be beneficial for the prospects of equal participation of men
and women in religion. In case of the household discussion, it could mean that a more subjective
understanding for the need of equal participation of women in the family religious functions.
Hence, both the larger society and the families in the microcosmic level would benefit from these
strategies in the context of participation of women in religion.

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5. Noteworthy points
Three points that were found to be noteworthy was the greater interest of women in
religion than men. Firstly, it was found that 30% of women consider religion to be important in
Canada as opposed to 26% of the men. 23% of women attend religious gatherings as opposed to
only 17% of the women (Women & Religion, 2019). Secondly, drawing on this it was pointed
out by one of the women scholars that even in the 19th Century women used to consider
themselves as being superior to men in terms of spirituality. Thirdly, it was found that medieval
Saudi Arabia actually had provided more rights to women than it does now. Hence, it was
pointed out that historically women did enjoy more religious freedom than they did in the last
few centuries.

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Works Cited
Klingorova, K., & Havlíček, T. (2015). Religion and gender inequality: The status of women in
the societies of world religions. Moravian Geographical Reports, 23(2), 2-11.
Women and Religion. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.tvo.org/video/women-and-religion