Does Religion Empower Women?

There is also great information at the Globe of Human History tab- Migration Studies on the previously referenced National Geographic site.

Follow the human empowerment trail at https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html . Click on Journey Highlights on the referenced page and read about the historic/pagan Adam(Eve) and the other important archeological/DNA findings of human history. The findings cover the last 60,000 years. Enjoy!!!!

Victoria, Victoria, Victoria,

You are following the dictates of a warmongering, hallucinating, illiterate, womanizing, long-dead Arab. It is time for Muslims to enter the New World and also the 21st Century by editing out all the idiocy of the koran, the Worst Book/SOP ever written. Get back to us when the editing is finished. Until then, stay in your cave!!!!

Pay no attention to the trolls Bakoor.

Bakoor, Bakoor, Bakoor,

You are following the dictates of a warmongering, hallucinating, illiterate, womanizing, long-dead Arab. It is time for Muslims to enter the New World and also the 21st Century by editing out all the idiocy of the koran, the Worst Book/SOP ever written. Get back to us when the editing is finished.

my opinion is yes, Faith in general gives extra ordinary power to all of us, believing in an idea strengthen the men and women.

as a respond to "halozcel1" ISLAM is not as you mentioned my dear!! I can't explain to you now what is the "woman" in the Islamic point of view, but I kindly invite you to read about this subject deeply and then judge.... the Islamic history is full of powerful and great women, furthermore, strengthening a woman means strengthening her environment, and it is true that "Behind each great man, there is a greater woman who helps him and push him ahead"

I don't blame some readers about what do they think about the situation of woman in ISLAM, since they have built their point of view about what they have seen in some islamic countries (like Afaghanistan and Saudia) but I have two points:

1- not all the news transmitted to you by the media are 100% right.

2- in order to know the reality, you have to read the sources and the islamic constitution, not to depend only on what some ignorant Muslims are doing.

"Science makes progress by distinguishing between what it regards as meaningful and what it considers to be merely static, i.e., a disruptive factor which can be ignored. Perceptiveness on the other hand deals with problems which as yet have no significance but which acquire significance in the future." Isabelle Stengers

The economic slow down has been good. I was on the road Friday and visited a machine shop started by some old friends. The shop is at the old mill and the mill is all gone. The guy that runs the place really doesn't run it, his daughter does. He just turns and grinds steel into different shapes. The train lumbers by. The big shots stole all the pensions, he reminds me. The mill site is large enough to support more machine shops and this one is making money. Right now the old mill site is supporting weeds and a handful of industries. There's room for growth and perception becomes reality. Religion deals with the significance of problems in the future. The problem with the mill site now is a lack of growth and the local economy is depressed. The problem of the future may turn out to be growth that happens too fast. Right now the growth is micro. Instead of one big company being organized, we are looking at the potential for hundreds of small firms transforming this site into a competitive industrial center. We have the power to do it and it will take time. A majority of the new firms could very well be owned by women, where the old firm was controlled by men. The result will be plenty of jobs for both men and women. The property is like a blank canvas now. We are looking for a sailmaker. Believe it or not sailmaking is now high tech.

The modern sailmaker makes use of computer-aided design and manufacturing tools. Computer graphics can allow the sailmaker to produce a "lines drawing" of the sail. Once the design is complete, the sailmaker can now use a low-power laser to cut the material to the exact shape. The machine shop can make about any boat part you need. The future servers will run on cool tuned microlasers instead of hot silicon. The machinist called the area Death Valley and went back to work.

Here's a good quote: "Powerlessness corrupts. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely." Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Religion is a social tool. Results vary with the skill of the user. History has shown it to be a powerful cultural engram, a tribal focal point, a mechanism of group identity. In the hands of charismatic leaders it is nearly always a force of evil, manipulating, controlling, and proscribing behavior, squelching dissent, with women often bearing the worst consequences.

As a personal spiritual force, it can be one that helps a woman persevere and overcome hardship and trial, one that helps her identify with a creative / procreative force not unlike her own, with the ebb and flow of life and death. In such cases it can be empowering, because the roles, actions, and choices become clearer and a path can be chosen with more authority, passion, understanding and be accepted with full responsibility. Sadly, religion is usually more about abdicating the responsibility of diligent thought, often outright denying reason in favor of faith.

Repetitive and / or compulsive rituals often help define the spiritual geography in which the user dwells, centered and peaceful. Or they can be used to brainwash the user into a malleable minion serving neither herself, nor her god, nor the community.

In short, religion and empowerment are not cause and effect, given the abusive nature of collective manipulation--in effect, crowd control.

Empowerment comes from freedom and knowledge and the willingness to learn and to act towards a goal or a value that is not destructive to others. Religion rarely satisfies these requirements.

--FIUS

Empowerment in various places of worship!!!

We go into the Muslim mosque and find a call to violence and oppression to women. We go into the Jewish synagogue and find myths and more calls to violence via the trumpets of Jericho. We go into the Catholic/Christian church and find blood and bodies and pretty, wingie thingies but no Virgin Mary. We go into Hindu temples and find cows and the lower class/caste cleaning up the dung. We go into a Buddhist temple and find tributes to an obese male figurine.

Susan Shaw's God Speaks to Me Too is must reading for all participants.
She teaches at Oregon State.

*If I were an idolater,you would be my idol*

What a word....What a saying....

Farhad and Shreen.An Iranian Love Legend.

Victoria, Victoria, Victoria,

Succinctly texting, have you finished reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Infidel???

As it turns out, the vast majority of the religions that we have had and still have on this planet do NOT empower women. Quite the reverse. As systems of largely imaginary ideas, doctrines, and rituals attentive to non-existent supernatural beings and forces, religions COULD theoretically empower women. But like other cultural tools, religions easily have been and can be used to put and keep women in a perpetual state of illiteracy, ignorance, and virtual slavery.

Jeff D

Funny female nature.
"No, no! said the Queen. "Sentence first-verdict afterwards." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"
Alice in Wonderland

You don't always get a fair trial in the court of public opinion or in the courts themselves. It looked like Fashion Court today because a woman was dressed just a little too well. The ladies were comparing prices and there is still plenty of stuff and nonsense to go around. Always dress well for court.

Genesis says I'm created in God's image. And made to share management/stewardship/dominion of the earth with man. Sounds pretty empowering.

When I was in Kenya last summer, I observed a new tribal school offered free by the local Christ-followers. When the school board was introduced, the men stood immediately. Yet the women on the board joined them only slowly, reluctantly. Our guide explained their hesitancy: "It's a new thing for them. The women didn't stand with the men...until Christ came."

In my city if you say "Methodist," you could as easily mean a hospital as a denomination. That hospital serves the needs of women, as well as giving women a means of helping others in the community.

Have there been abuses? Certainly. Still, I think Dorothy L. Sayers summarizes it well:

“Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there has never been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as ‘The women, God help us!’ or ‘The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature.”

Does religion empower women?

From the perspective of modern, secular society it seems as if religion does not empower women (especially the monotheistic religions) but it must be remembered that all the great religions were born in times when violence was much more casual than today and the task of religion was to transform man rather than impose on women. In other words religion worked to diminish violence and allow our modern times to be born.

Women actually benefited from religion in the past because with religion the violence of man was more and more coming to be held at bay and anything that can hold man at bay must by definition be on the right track of empowering women. Only from a modern perspective does it seem that religion added to the brutality of ancient times. And it should be observed that our modern times are not so removed from the religious ages as we like to imagine. Violence may be less but we still lock our doors at night. Is a woman being robbed of power if she has to lock her door at night?

The problem really is man. The less man is held at bay the more we speak of an age in which women are not empowered. The more man is held at bay the more we speak of women being empowered. Religions did the best they could in violent times and only seem to have added to violence from our perspective in which the work of religion is perhaps coming to a close. Religion coming to a close? Certainly we see that man is coming to be held at bay by education, law enforcement, technology (surveillance, DNA testing, etc.) more and more. Religion is increasingly irrelevant in restraining man. Man essentially has empowered woman by restraining himself first with religion and now with technology. And we have to ask what it means for man that he has so much technology coming online to restrain himself.

To conclude: an alteration of man empowered women and man is not yet finished in altering himself. Perhaps man will not be finished being altered until the day all people can sleep with doors unlocked. The big question is what man has to be altered into to arrive at a world in which women are truly empowered.

Succinctly, and excellently said Climacus.

To ask whether religion empowers women seems a bit like asking whether politics empowers women. The answer, of course, is that it the latter case it depends on the women, and in the former it depends on the religion.

Too often the On Faith questions treat "religion" as though it were monolithic.

Women can bring peace and peace empowers all to build a more just world. A world worthy of the children, is a world free from unending war and violence. Progress can't happen without peace.

"Pocahontas apparently married an Indian "pryvate Captayne" named Kocoum in 1610. She lived in Potomac country among Indians, but her relationship with the Englishmen was not over. When an energetic and resourceful member of the Jamestown settlement, Captain Samuel Argall, learned where she was, he devised a plan to kidnap her and hold her for ransom. With the help of Japazaws, lesser chief of the Patowomeck Indians, Argall lured Pocahontas onto his ship. When told she would not be allowed to leave, she “began to be exceeding pensive and discontented," but she eventually became calmer and even accustomed to her captivity. Argall sent word to Powhatan that he would return his beloved daughter only when the chief had returned to him the English prisoners he held, the arms and tolls that the Indians had stolen, and also some corn. After some time Powhatan sent part of the ransom and asked that they treat his daughter well. Argall returned to Jamestown in April 1613 with Pocahontas. She eventually moved to a new settlement, Henrico, which was under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale. It was here that she began her education in the Christian Faith, and that she met a successful tobacco planter named John Rolfe in July 1613. Pocahontas was allowed relative freedom within the settlement, and she began to enjoy her role in the relations between the colony and her people. After almost a year of captivity, Dale brought 150 armed men and Pocahontas into Powhatan’s territory to obtain her entire ransom. Attacked by the Indians, the Englishmen burned many houses, destroyed villages, and killed several Indian men. Pocahontas was finally sent ashore where she was reunited with two of her brothers, whom she told that she was treated well and that she was in love with the Englishman John Rolfe and wanted to marry him. Powhatan gave his consent to this , and the Englishmen departed, delighted at the prospect of the “peace-making” marriage, although they didn’t receive the full ransom.

John Rolfe was a very religious man who agonized for many weeks over the decision to marry a "strange wife," a heathen Indian. He finally decided to marry Pocahontas after she had been converted to Christianity, "for the good of the plantation, the honor of our country, for the glory of God, for mine own salvation ..." Pocahontas was baptized, christened Rebecca, and later married John Rolfe on April 5, 1614. A general peace and a spirit of goodwill between the English and the Indians resulted from this marriage." http://www.apva.org/history/pocahont.html

Added evidence about Islam and its oppression of women from Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Infidel:

"Thus begins the extraordinary story of a woman born into a family of desert nomads, circumcised as a child, educated by radical imams in Kenya and Saudi Arabia, taught to believe that if she uncovered her hair, terrible tragedies would ensue. It's a story that, with a few different twists, really could have led to a wretched life and a lonely death, as her grandmother warned. But instead, Hirsi Ali escaped -- and transformed herself into an internationally renowned spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women."
ref: Washington Post book review.

four excerpts:

p. 47 paperback issue:

"Some of the Saudi women in our neighborhood were regularly beaten by their husbands. You could hear them at night. Their screams resounded across the courtyards. "No! Please! By Allah!"

p.68:

"The Pakistanis were Muslims but they too had castes. The Untouchable girls, both Indian and Pakistani were darker skin. The others would not play with them because they were untouchable. We thought that was funny because of course they were touchable: we touched them see? but also horrifying to think of yourself as untouchable, despicable to the human race."

p.309

"Between October 2004 and May 2005, eleven Muslim girls were killed by their families in just two regions (there are 20 regions in Holland). After that, people stopped telling me I was exaggerating."

p. 347

"The kind on thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia and among the Brotherhood of Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves the feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hyprocricy, and double standards. It relies on the technologial advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam."

Susan Shaw has a book God Speaks to Us Too that will be making waves in Baptist circles across the spectrum.
Raised in a fundamentalist church in Rome Georgia that in the 70's was a pretty much a chapter of the John Birch Society, she shows how her Mother's Bible Study Group makes stronger women than you might imagine.
Her former pastor became a President of the Southern Baptist Convention at the height of it Karl Rove political playground voting bloc.
Fascinating read.
Hope yall will do a story on her at Newsweek and put her in the hopper for panel on PBS Newshour and other areas of influence.

No,no,no.Religion/Cult doesnt empower women,especially,islam
-enslaves women
-oppresses women
-subjugates women
-plays with woman's dignity
-makes woman second,even third class citizen
-is misogynist