Feminism

• Maintaining patriarchy- Daly

  -religion does this by portraying male domination over women

  -there can't equality in religion until there is acceptance that the God could be a woman
• Maintaining patriarchy- examples

  -portraying God as a man

  -restricting access for women to top levels of the church
• Maintaining patriarchy- Evaluation (Woodhead)

  Women use religion as a way to gain greater freedom and respect. The Hijab is seen as a form of oppression inn west but can also be seen as a form of liberation as it allows them to enter public spaces without fear of being immodest
• Second class believers- Simone De Beauvoir

  -Religion tricks women into believing that they are equal to men in the eyes of god and will be rewarded for their suffering in the after life

  -girls are socialised into worshipping a male god so are encouraged to unconsciously see men as superior
• Second class believers- example (Holm)

  -segregated places of worship between genders

  -women aren't allowed to read from sacred texts or touch them if they are mensurating (Islam)
• Second class believers- Evaluation

  -liberal protestant movement e.g. Quakers, there is a commitment to gender equality

  -1/5 of CoE priests are female
• Stained glass ceiling- Armstrong

  -women are often blocked from the top positions in mainstream churches

  -Studied the CoE and found a 'stained glass ceiling' - women are blocked from progressing to the top of the hierarchy
• Stained glass ceiling- Examples

  The vote to allow female bishops in the CoE was strongly opposed by traditionalists
• Stained glass ceiling- Evaluation (Saadawi)

  -it's not the religions that are patriarchal but the cultures that they appear in

  -e.g. Islam and Arab culture shows this, in Arab culture men hold all the powerful positions meaning their able to interpret the Qur'an to support their views
• Women are more likely to join sects and cults because... (Stark and Bainbridge)

  -Organismic deprivation - women are more likely to suffer from ill health so will look to sects and cults for healing

  -Ethical deprivation- women tend to be more morally conservatively so are more likely to see the world in moral decline and share the views held by sects and cults

  -Social deprivation-sects and cults tend to attract the poorer groups in society and women are more likely to be in poverty than men