Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, a regular op-ed contributor to the New York Times, has dedicated his influence to fighting against women’s oppression across the world. Most recently, with this wife Sheryl WuDunn, he released the popular book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf, September 2009).
Yesterday in the New York Times his op-ed was titled, “Religion and Women,” so naturally I was eager to read. And I really appreciated many things about this piece. It highlighted a multiply of oppressions against women, both some regularly witnessed and experienced by women in the US, and some more commonly associated with other parts of the world. He also illustrated how widespread these problems are in relation to religion–many types of religion throughout history and across the globe.
Most of all, I appreciated how Kristof demonstrated the complex relationship between gender and religion. While religion is often sighted as a source of women’s oppression (and rightly so, I think), frequently it is also a context wherein women receive opportunities to exercise their power and authority. In my experience, people commonly dismiss religion as entirely sexist and misogynist, missing the complexity of gender dynamics that exist within many religious communities. Kristof points this out with an example of conservative Christian and pentecostal churches in Africa, which often recognize women’s leadership more than their other community’s outside religion.
We absolutely need to call out religion whenever and wherever it oppresses others, but I hope we can do this accurately so as to honor the women within religion. If we simply dismiss religion, I think we run the risk of dismissing the reality of the women within the world’s many traditions. That would be a very contradictory attempt at battling women’s oppression.
4 Comments
January 12, 2010 at 11:35 am
Great post, and thanks for the link.
I am a bit skeptical of the pentecostal version of women in leadership since it often requires that the woman distance herself from her own womanhood and suggests only that God can work through the weakest of persons, rather than that women are persons with spiritual value equal to that of men. But I suppose that exposure to power is good, even if it involves a bit of self-loathing?
January 12, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Rae, I think you bring an important skepticism to this issue–one I possess myself. A few thoughts, though: I always have to remind myself that “pentecostal” is a very big and diverse category (like “Catholic,” too!). Surely, there are some communities that seem to offer women opportunities to exert their authority under contingencies that seem merely to perpetuate “self-loathing” and other oppressive factors. However, I think that is not necessarily the precise description of all pentecostal communities. And, second, I find it significant and inspiring to acknowledge that even amid the oppressive structures of religion, women are often using other components of their traditions to exercise authority. (A few books that touch on this include Saba Mahmood’s “Politics of Piety” and R. Marie Griffith’s “God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission”).
This is not to say that these oppressive structures and teachings shouldn’t be challenged and irradiated, but I think that people often dismiss a religion entirely because of some aspects of it–overlooking these other factors…
I’d love to know more about what you think. Thanks for the comment!
January 15, 2010 at 9:37 am
You are entirely correct. Unfortunately, I was overly broad in my generalization in what should have been a more carefully constructed critique of Kristof’s generalizations. I suppose that this topic requires much more than an article or comment & it is unfair to expect anyone to explore it thoroughly in less than 1,000 words.
January 16, 2010 at 2:05 am
I think you are right on in many ways–don’t get me wrong!