In spite of global efforts to ameliorate gender inequality, women are still persistently told to cover any bare skin, to comply with their husbands, and to end their pursuit of rights. In this article, the author examines the underlying relation between conservatism in religions as well as cultures and the plights of women. This article writes more than slogans and empty cries. It reveals the somber prospect of many women.
Author: Jianing
Captioner: Mindy Jia
More than once, people have told me, “Gender inequality isn’t real. Wage gaps don’t exist.” Yet, there lies the undermined sufferings of women who cover their bodies because a glimpse at their bare arms is just irresistible for men. Counterintuitively, multiculturalism fuels such gender stereotypes and oppression in terms of prolonging the use of religion as justification for gender role stigmas and the prevention of women from being able to escape conservativism physically.
Primarily, Multiculturalism harms women with religious backgrounds. Multiculturalism, “the presence of or support for several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society” (Apple dictionary), is inevitable with rising globalization. Even in an age where the idea of equality is widespread, certain sectors of Islam and Judaism promote male superiority, consequently imprisoning women in their bodies and minds.
Despite modern efforts to combat gender oppression in religious areas, Muslim women can be divorced unilaterally by their husbands at any time (Mshweshwe). This silently degrades women indefinitely and ruins their children’s lives by forcing them to grow up in vile circumstances.
In Judaism, women too, are persecuted. The Halakhic law states that “unless the husband agrees to give his wife a bill of divorce […] she is not released from the marriage. She cannot [even] remarry...” (Williams). How ironic is it that belief systems that promote peace and justice unjustly violate and oppress the rights of disciples merely for their gender?
It does not end there. The invincible injustice leads to the prevention of women’s abilities to pursue their rights. Women’s oppression took a turn downhill in the 1980s as they were tied up and shipped across waters like slaves as the French government quietly permitted immigrant men to bring multiple wives into the country (Okin). They were silenced and forced to succumb.
Intuitively, justice cannot be upheld without the disintegration of fundamentally criminal laws like the “marry-your-rapist” law, excusing harassers from life sentences and placing victims in lifelong danger without a way to ask for help. Though radically conservative, “twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to escape criminal prosecution, according to the UN’s annual state of world population report” (The Guardian). Such laws deny women of their bodily autonomy and degrade them to be property of men instead of equal humans. Religion has made way for the second wave of slavery, but this time targeting women, and in a carnal sense. The traumatizing effect of this law has led victims to death. In fact, a young woman in Morocco killed herself aftershe was forced to marry her rapist, and it was only then that people realized the radicalness and injustice of the law.
Furthermore, the persecution of women in religiously dominant, conservative regions are also stripped of economic rights. In Morocco, men are entitled to all their inheritance shares, while women heirs only receive a fraction. Originally, this was because men were expected to take care of the women in their family, and hence received control over family inheritances as well. However, later investigations done by researchers reveal that men often refused to help distant relatives with their inheritances (Medias 24). As women are denied education and hence many high paying jobs in such regions, they are unable to become economically independent and free themselves from the reigns of oppressive religion.
Speaking of education, “internationally, cultural norms can be an important factor in women's educational level and involvement in the labor force. In less developed countries, high infant mortality rates and normative beliefs in the value of large families result in gender role differentiation that is often supported by religious codes and by institutionalized authority structures” (Malik 1995). As women in conservative regions are expected to take care of their children and give up their jobs or any other original occupations to stay home and fit into the mold of a “docile mother figure and obedient wife”. Little girls, from a young age, are taught how to sew and cook and clean, their parents unwilling to invest in education because their daughters will end up in another man’s household, providing for that man’s family instead of her own. Forced child marriages and conservative social narratives are only two of the myriads of reasons that contribute to the diminishing female education attainment rate.
Despite clear persecution, there are questions about the magnitude of gender oppression in conservative cultures when multiculturalism is so significant for religious freedom, often in defense of certain religions. "Religious laws are an important part of their religious freedom,” defenders say, “Moreover, the women benefit overall from having their way of life protected” (Mshweshwe). Often, these are narratives carried out by priests or disciples of a religion, shaped and framed around their own conservative ideals, spreading messages that the doctrines and scriptures don’t hold.
Furthermore, although it is important to consider the benefits that religion brings to families and historical rekindling and protection, it is also unnecessary and immoral to do so at the expense of an entire gender demographic, especially when they are a vulnerable minority that has faced decades of persecution, some blind to their own mistreatment because of these absurd narratives. In fact, as more women in conservative countries are taught that they are “oppressed in glory,” they are discouraged to stand up for themselves, as shown in Figure 1 below (Statista Research Department). Indeed, data from 2020 shows that in Western Europe it is estimated that it will take around 52 years to achieve equality between the genders. In South Asia, on the other hand, where it is less liberal and more dominated by conservative religions, it is supposed to take 195 years (Statista Research Department). There is not a clear causational link that directly states such religions are the only factor preventing gender equality, but it is one of the factors that are more closely tied with social norms, especially in regions like Iran and India that are heavily based around a central religion. Conservative religions themselves are not harming women, yet the ideals that have been carried over from the 15th century are. One should acknowledge that modern societies call for modern ideals.
Another common argument that religious disciples in conservative regions make is that multiculturalism is the key to the disintegration of gender oppression. They claim that with the increasing synthesis of cultures and ideas in conservative nations, women are exposed to more liberal ideals in which they see that oppression is neither normal nor right. Erdoğan (1999: 195) says multiculturalism is a political and social system expressing that there is no problem in the together living of diverse cultural traditions, regardless of their cultural origin, based on the principle of equality.
The issue with this argument, however, is that, like many other laws coming from a benevolent state of mind, multiculturalism does not fulfill its purpose, and rather fuels the opposite.For example, the anti-abortion law in Texas was created to protect unborn lives, yet harms women who were victims of sexual assault in the process, hence unable to fulfill its purpose of creating a better community. Similarly, the spread of liberal ideals to a conservative nation causes social conflicts and radicalism amongst different cultural or religious groups, leading to less homogeny, and hence more resentment of citizens towards those liberal ideals fueled by the hatred towards conflict and war.
In societies where more than one culture coexists, there is an increase in polarity between groups with countering ideals, which can cause intense pressure especially on minority groups (Keskin). As women, especially poor women who are often still sold to families through child marriages in conservative nations, are minorities and hence have less social and political clout than male counterparts. Therefore, as societies progress, and globalization inevitably pushes for multiculturalism, leading to civil conflicts that will create conflicts that favor those who have more social and political clout, women as a minority group will receive the brunt of the stick. It is easy to brush these problems off if you don’t live in a conservative society and face the oppression that these women face, and even easier when you are not a woman at all, but rather the man who enjoys the superiority that religion grants.
Hence, despite controversy, some women in conservative nations have been fed lies about their gender’s inadequacies, and so multiculturalism prevents those women from being freed. It prevents women who seek equal pay and equal rights from escaping a prison in which they are not permitted to even show their wrists. That is a world in which birds may not fly and women not thrive. A world dysfunctional and manipulative in every way. /
Works Cited:
• Boston Review. bostonreview.net/forum/susan-moller-okin-multiculuralism-bad-women/. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.
• Keskin, Sevgi Coşkun. "Problems and Their Solutions in a Multicultural Environment According to Pre-service Social Studies Teachers." Journal of Education and Training Studies, vol. 6, no. 7, 22 June 2018. RedFame, https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v6i7.3292. Accessed 27 Jan. 2022.
• Mshweshwe, Linda. "Understanding Domestic Violence: Masculinity, Culture, Traditions." Heliyon. ScienceDirect, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05334. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
• ---. "Would you define yourself as a feminist - someone who advocates and supports equal opportunities for women?" Statista, Mar. 2021, www.statista.com/statistics/312161/define-self-feminist-advocates-supports-equal-opportunities-women/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2022.
• Tonsing, Jenny C., and Kareen N. Tonsing. "Understanding the role of patriarchal ideology in intimate partner violence among South Asian women in Hong Kong." International Social Work, vol. 62, no. 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872817712566. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.
• Wilson, Bradford P. "Multiculturalism Is Harmful." Edited by Mary E. Williams. Gale, Mary E. Williams, 2004, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010121252/OVIC?u=ingl29443&sid=bookmark- OVIC&xid=109db273. Accessed 17 Jan. 2022.
• Guardian, 4-1-2021, "‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice," https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/14/marry-your-rapist-laws-in-20-countries-still-allow-perpetrators-to-escape-justice
• https://medias24.com/2018/03/21/heritage-102-intellectuels-lancent-un-appel-pour-labrogation-de-la-regle-du-tasib/
• Seth W. Norton and Annette Tomal (2009). Religion and Female Educational Attainment. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 41(5), 961–986. doi:10.2307/40271588
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