Johnson,+Imani



Imani Johnson's World History Religion Project

Draft

Research Question: Are females and males discriminated against one another due to their religion or cultural beliefs?


 * __Introduction to topic:__**

Gender has played a huge role in the world since ancient times. Both genders, men and females, have suffered from expectations and assigned responsibilities their society’s came from. Although it may seem normal to humans that gender roles are present in their lives, not everybody agrees with them especially women. It is unknown if some gender roles come from a religion or a culture’s beliefs but if you look closely at some religions you can tell them some roles were born from the word of that particular religion’s God. Most gender roles come from whatever religion there are a part of due to what their god says each gender should be responsible for. For some religions in certain countries the general gender roles of that religion get switched up due to the country’s ancient beliefs for genders. For example, in Egypt Islam is one of the many religions in there but because they are famous for female influence such as female rulers, females have power but in another Islamic country they may not have the same privileges as the Egyptian women. So in this brochure we will dig deeper to see how gender roles are really affected by religion and if the roles change in different religions.


 * __Interpretation and Analysis:__**

//Christianity//

In Christianity gender roles aren’t really a huge part of determining a Christian’s role in life. Although this is the case, Jesus does make the change of female roles in Jerusalem because to he believed in was unfair for women to be treated that way. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, women didn’t have many privileges such as not being able to attend important public events, not being able to divorce their husband, had no authority, wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers, and if a woman was unmarried, they were not allowed to leave their father’s home until married. Women were considered inferior to men, for example in the Hebrew Scriptures it states that women are only second best for inheritance, ".//..If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren. And if he have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his father's brethren. And if his father have no brethren, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his kinsman that is next to him of his family...."// Or even that they didn’t have any say in whether or not who they want to be married to. Jesus didn’t agree with the way women were treated because he believed that men and women were created equally so he started to rebel against most of the Jewish laws for women. For an example Jesus changed the law about divorce to that men and women have the choice to divorce their partner.

In addition to Jesus’ idea on gender equality, Jesus used certain terms that put men and women at the same level. He also taught female students which was also against the law, // "Rather should the words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman...Whoever teaches his daughter the Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity." // Jesus decided that men and women should have the same status instead of being discriminated because everyone was created equal. Although it may seem as though the Bible was for equality between man and woman, there are also sections of the Bible where it speaks very negatively about women but then how they are leaders.

//Hinduism//

In Hinduism societies, boys are valued more than girls are I’m not sure if it’s purely based on their religion or if that’s just the world’s general idea of boys and girls. Boys and valued more because apparently men do the most work and therefore are valued more. Due to males being valued more, during pregnancies some women look at their ultrasounds and if they see that their baby is a girl they abort the baby immediately. In an article written by R. J. Rummel he writes, “In India, for example, because of Hindu beliefs and the rigid caste system, young girls were murdered as a matter of course. When demographic statistics were first collected in the nineteenth century, it was discovered that in "some villages, no girl babies were found at all; in a total of thirty others, there were 343 boys to 54 girls. ... [I]n Bombay, the number of girls alive in 1834 was 603." Many people would believe that isn’t fair to the unborn baby girl’s but because of that religion, view on who is more important due to their work ethics.

The result of men having more value is that men have lower statuses in their communities and their entire life. Having a low status means that they have no authority in their household or over somebody or even have an influence in huge decisions. Actually according to the Manusmriti, women are not supposed to be independent and is supposed be sorely dependent on whatever man is in her life. “Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence”