LITERATURE REVIEW
For ages long, it has been adjudged that men have been perceived as the
sole bearers and disseminators of divine messages. Patriarchal religious
structures and practices have been used to socialize women to passively
accept religious teachings and dogmas as served by men with every sense
of subservience and submission. These andocentric and patriarchal
interpretations have defined, shaped and reshaped the socio-cultural,
political, economic and otherwise contexts of women in many parts of the
world which often culminates in their disempowerment and second class
status. Kong (2010) views religion as a negotiated reality with each
individual or society defining its own understanding, tenets and
applicability within the space of time and circumstance. There is
therefore the need for such fluidity, pores and nuances to be located at
the epicenter of any religious discuss- whether academic or pedestal.
Schnabel (2015) was of a similar opinion when he presented that the
emergence and institutionalization of different religious movements with
rigid beliefs and sermons however presents a fissure between the
original episteme and the way they are practiced in actuality. The
chronic and historical challenge is to maintain and preserve the voices
of prophetic dissent and propagate the freedom (for both men and women)
necessary to institute change in the contemporary world. Pertinently,
women have the larger stakes in this cycle as they are the ones
suppressed and oppressed by the dogmas of submission, subservience and
docility of traditional religions as it were.
Researchers such as Reitz et al (2015) have shown that religion is
associated with traditional gender attitudes and actions, and because
beliefs can materialize in effects (Seguino, 2011), it is expected that
a major chunk of non-religious people in a country will be acclimatized
more with material gender equality. It is in the same vein suspected and
expected that the major world religions differ in their effects from one
another, but that the largest differences will be between the religious
and the non-religious, rather than between particular religious groups
(Charrad, 2011). There is the conscious twist of religion to monopolize
power through homogenization and ritualization (Kong, 2010), therefore,
any agenda for change must pluralize religious practices to capture the
original thrust of the episteme which is rooted in egalitarianism. Thus
spaces must be created and reserved in our sub-consciousness and social
faculty to earnestly yearn for and accommodate not just a recovery of
the past but also an innovation of new liberating symbols, language and
imagery that challenge authorized patriarchal canons that had held sway
in the practice of religion.
With the effective utilization of these spaces, women globally ought to
stake their claim visibly, vehemently and powerfully for not just their
rights but also for their perspectives, ministrations and
interpretations to be accepted as part of the core religious canons, for
without this the antique and current guardians of existing religious and
social structures will not be pushed to a critical consciousness of
their oppressive nature.
Similarly, Fernandes (2016) opined that men and masculinity have always
been the measure and determinant of the dialogue between the holy and
profane which has often culminated in the male folk monopolizing the
space of worship, prescribing that offerings can be made only by men.
Most importantly, there is the somewhat growing religious consensus that
women are impure because of their biological menstruation cycle
(Fernandes, 2016). Owing to this, women are considered defiled and thus
cannot enter the holy of holies (Jewish tabernacle), forbidden from
performing Puja (Hindu offering), and cannot lead the Namaz (Salat, or
Islamic prayer). This has rhetorically questioned the physique and
anatomy of women (UN Women, 2018). The protruding question now remains
that blood- the very ingredient that keeps one alive, has it now become
a fountain of impurity?
Most amazingly, cross-sectional differences in support for or against
gender equality vis-à-vis religion vary even between societies at
different levels and stages of development, and depend upon the
magnitude of religiosity and the type of religious values expressed and
promoted by such society. It was the conclusion of Inglehart and Norris
(2003) that religion matters, not only for cultural attitudes but for
the opportunities as well as constraints it places on the lives
of women where it exists, these could manifest in the ratio of females
to males in educational enrolment, the female adult literacy rate, the
application of contraception in family life and opportunities granted
women in the paid workforce and in parliamentary representation.
Despite the many forms of marginalization perpetrated through religion
globally as seen above, there are instances of women who had soared on
the roughened and wrecked back of religion to the highest echelon of
fame hence, this work.