Which religions favor women?

[MrDibble]

Christian Science is very heavily into gender equality on the face of it - there is frequently one Reader of each gender, they refer to God as asexual/androgynous ("Father-Mother God") and the veneration of Mary Baker Eddy is, frankly, somewhat cultlike for some C-Scientists. Not sure how that carries over to the Church as a whole...

[matt_mcl]

Originally Posted by Qin Shi Huangdi

The Anglicans allow the ordination of women as clergy and are otherwise quite egalitarian. The same can be said for most other liberal Christian denominations.

Likewise, the United Church of Canada, Canada's largest Protestant denomination, believes explicitly in gender equality and has ordained women since 1936 (though the Canadian Methodists, one of the component churches of the UCC, had been ordaining women since 1880). A number of women have served as Moderators of the UCC, though this is not a sacred position and need not be held by a clergyperson (the current moderator is a lay woman).

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by even sven

Islam has very defined rights for women.

the cutting edge of women's rights a thousand years ago isn't really all that progressive today.

What, nobody's gonna jump on that sharia pun?


(emphasis mine)

[gwendee]

Originally Posted by MrDibble

Christian Science is very heavily into gender equality on the face of it - there is frequently one Reader of each gender, they refer to God as asexual/androgynous ("Father-Mother God") and the veneration of Mary Baker Eddy is, frankly, somewhat cultlike for some C-Scientists. Not sure how that carries over to the Church as a whole...

When I first read the OP I thought of posting about Christian Science. My own take is that it reveres equality moreso than women. In Science and Health (often called the Christian Science textbook) Mary Baker Eddy wrote:

One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; con‐
stitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the
Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" annihilates
pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in
social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes;
equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves
nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.

[monavis]

Originally Posted by gallan

Or perhaps more to the point, is there currently, or has there ever been, any major religion that isn't inherently misogynistic in the way early texts, doctrines, and leaders address women, even if the religion isn't still widely practiced today?

I read once years ago that the godesses were worshipped before Gods came in to power. Archaeologists have found many small statues fom that time of female gods.

[Nava]

Originally Posted by Keeve

I know, for example, that in my religion (Judaism), there are a great many things which certainly SEEM misogynistic, but depending on how one understands them, they can seem not anti-women, or might even be pro-women.

I presume the same is true in other religions as well.

Yep. A lot of things need to be put in context: in a time and place where nobody had thought of giving women the right to vote, would it be mysoginistic to not let women vote in [church] business? It would have been, it was, business as usual.

[Anne Neville]

Originally Posted by Gagundathar

Wicca is a very decentralized religion. In fact, quite a few of its practitioners relish the fact that it is a 'disorganized' religion.

There's a bit of that going on in Conservative Judaism, too. There is a committee of rabbis that decides what Conservative Jewish law is, but local rabbis or congregations can decide to override that. They won't get kicked out or told they can't call themselves Conservative Jewish any more if they do.

In my experience, most Conservative synagogues do call women to the Torah and do not have separate seating for men and women. I certainly wouldn't join one that didn't call women to the Torah, did have separate seating, or did have a problem with women in leadership positions. These requirements have never been a problem for us when looking for a Conservative synagogue.

[Johanna]

Originally Posted by greenslime1951

Islam and Judaism explicitly state that women are to be subservient to men

Not sure about Judaism, but there is no such thing in Islam.

but Islamic societies treat their women like farm animals

No they don't. You're just making shit up.

Although one of my exes had been to Russia and showed me a dress she got there which was a regular tent, like an extra-voluminous muumuu but full-length. She said in the old days, Russian peasant women had to pull the plows (what, they didn't have mules?), and they wore this type of dress for the work. My ex never wore the thing, of course, she just bought it to demonstrate the former status of Russian women.

As for Wicca, when Gardner put together the Gardnerian type of Wicca in the 1930s, he encoded hard and fast gender roles that appear obsolete to 21st-century eyes and are unfriendly to all gender variants.

My nominations for the best woman-friendly (and not man-unfriendly) forms of Witchcraft are Feri and Reclaiming. Both are radically egalitarian and liberatory as to gender. Every possible gender or combination thereof or lack thereof is welcomed and valued. I'm in Reclaiming, and I've never found any religion that suits me better; I felt absolutely at home in it for the first time in my life.

As for Dianic Craft, it's a tragic failure. It could have been such an awesome deal for witch women if it hadn't departed from positive feminist principles to become a misandric hate group. (Yes, guys, there is a difference between them.) If Gardner's Wicca is stuck in the 1930s as to gender, Dianic Witchcraft is stuck in the 1980s' sex wars. The world has moved on from that stuff.

Also: What everyone else said about UU. They are right on.

[Johanna]

Originally Posted by brujaja

Stregheria!!!

Hai detto la verità.

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by kanicbird

Wicca as practiced where I am vastly favors females and males are basically second class.

Matches my observations, too. There's a lot of lip service to equality, but most of the movers and shakers in the community are the women.

Originally Posted by Johanna

As for Wicca, when Gardner put together the Gardnerian type of Wicca in the 1930s, he encoded hard and fast gender roles that appear obsolete to 21st-century eyes and are unfriendly to all gender variants.

Word. And that's trickled down to a lot of Generic Neopaganism, as well. Where the hell does one stand when the Maypole is divided into two rings - men and women - if one has a gender not matching sex, or a gender that is neither exclusively male nor female? The good news is, I've had a LOT of interesting discussions with other Priest/esses about different ways to divvy people up without forcing everyone into a gender binary. The bad news is, the gender binary is still predominate in public rituals.

My nominations for the best woman-friendly (and not man-unfriendly) forms of Witchcraft are Feri and Reclaiming. Both are radically egalitarian and liberatory as to gender. Every possible gender or combination thereof or lack thereof is welcomed and valued. I'm in Reclaiming, and I've never found any religion that suits me better; I felt absolutely at home in it for the first time in my life.

Yay! Glad you found your home. I really dig Reclaiming, except there was a witch war with my local group a few years ago that turned me off them in particular. *sigh* (And, wow, someone else who knows of Feri?! You've been seeking pretty hard, I can tell. That's not well known even in neopagan circles.)

I think Dianic Wicca can be a good step along peoples' Path, but it's not a great final destination. I've found that some women really need that Wymmym Power energy and space for a time to shed their patriarchy baggage, but most who stay there for long are...not healthy.

Despite where it came from, I've found most Golden Dawn offshoots to be pretty egalitarian in practice, moreso than many Wiccan offshoots. There's still a strong binary on paper, but powerful learned people of multiple genders in equal or nearly equal representation in the hierarchy. But that could just be my locals.

[Johanna]

Originally Posted by monavis

I read once years ago that the godesses were worshipped before Gods came in to power. Archaeologists have found many small statues fom that time of female gods.

An excellent study of the subject is The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler (a refugee from Nazism). It's a controversial field because it gets attributed to "matriarchy"^{[by whom?]} and then gets the counter-argument that there is no evidence of any human society having been a matriarchy. Eisler's take gets the subject out of that intellectual quagmire by showing how "matriarchy" was never the point of the pre-patriarchal era of the Goddess. Rather, it was a partnership society as opposed to a dominator society.

The concept of matriarchy simply replaces one dominator with another (to use the Latin term, a dominatrix—literally female dominator. How you feel about it in that light? ) Eisler's reading of Goddess prehistory removed it from any kind of domination and situated it in the egalitarian concept of partnership society.

She presents archæological evidence for this from Minoan Crete, which was one of the last survivors of prehistoric Goddess egalitarianism. There were no huge differences in real estate value between the richest and the poorest residents. Moreover, the homes and buildings of the wealthy and powerful were mixed up in the same neighborhoods with the homes of the middle-income and poor. In contrast to the heavy socioeconomic disparity, stratification, and hierarchy evident in the city planning of authoritarian/warlike/patriarchal societies. (There were also no fortification walls in Minoan Crete, although perhaps it's been argued that the Minoan Navy was powerful enough to make them unnecessary. I dunno.)

Eisler coined the term gylany (from Greek gyne 'woman', lyein and lyo 'to solve, resolve; to dissolve, set free', andros 'man') for the partnership society she envisions in which men and women are really equal and neither dominates over the other. She says it's possible for humans because we already accomplished it in prehistory. Reclaiming Witchcraft, which I'm part of, is inspired in part by this gylanic theory and functions on it in praxis. I've seen it work.

[Johanna]

Rather, the Greek etymon for 'man' is anēr. Sorry for repeating this error. I just missed the edit window.

[Boozahol Squid, P.I.]

Originally Posted by Johanna

Rather, the Greek etymon for 'man' is anēr. Sorry for repeating this error. I just missed the edit window.

Both andros and aner are equally translatable as 'man', although the connotation of the latter is somewhat more masculine.

[MrDibble]

Originally Posted by Johanna

She presents archæological evidence for this from Minoan Crete, which was one of the last survivors of prehistoric Goddess egalitarianism. There were no huge differences in real estate value between the richest and the poorest residents. Moreover, the homes and buildings of the wealthy and powerful were mixed up in the same neighborhoods with the homes of the middle-income and poor. In contrast to the heavy socioeconomic disparity, stratification, and hierarchy evident in the city planning of authoritarian/warlike/patriarchal societies. (There were also no fortification walls in Minoan Crete, although perhaps it's been argued that the Minoan Navy was powerful enough to make them unnecessary. I dunno.)

I didn't know that about Crete. All you read about is the Palace, so I always assumed stratification. The Indus Valley Civilisation is egalitarian like this as well, as was the early Turkish settlements like Çatalhöyük. I know the latter also has "goddess" statues, and of course the former has its "dancing girl" and lots of other female figurines.

[Johanna]

WhyNot—thanks for the information. I avoid witch wars. If I see one coming, I head the other way. Sorry you didn't see the best out of my peeps wherever you're located. All I know is, in the mid-Atlantic region, the Reclaiming folks are awesome.

MrDibble—yeah, I love all that prehistoric stuff. Göbekli Tepe, a few hundred miles east of Çatalhöyük, is a Mesolithic site with the earliest evidence of both organized religion and grain cultivation, which it seems went together. Its archæology over its 3,500 years of occupancy literally bridges the Paleolithic and Neolithic. It pushes the origins of religion and agriculture back a couple thousand years than thought earlier. The iconography of the Anatolian Mother Goddess, a woman flanked with lions, holding a frame drum, is found beginning at Göbekli Tepe, also found at Çatalhöyük, historically attested by the Hittites, and adopted by the classical Greeks and Romans as Cybele, is consistent from the Mesolithic right through to the fall of Roman Paganism. She continued as Mary, but they took away her lions and drum. She was originally the Goddess of mountains, wild places, wild beasts.

[Malthus]

Originally Posted by Johanna

WhyNot—thanks for the information. I avoid witch wars. If I see one coming, I head the other way. Sorry you didn't see the best out of my peeps wherever you're located. All I know is, in the mid-Atlantic region, the Reclaiming folks are awesome.

MrDibble—yeah, I love all that prehistoric stuff. Göbekli Tepe, a few hundred miles east of Çatalhöyük, is a Mesolithic site with the earliest evidence of both organized religion and grain cultivation, which it seems went together. Its archæology over its 3,500 years of occupancy literally bridges the Paleolithic and Neolithic. It pushes the origins of religion and agriculture back a couple thousand years than thought earlier. The iconography of the Anatolian Mother Goddess, a woman flanked with lions, holding a frame drum, is found beginning at Göbekli Tepe, also found at Çatalhöyük, historically attested by the Hittites, and adopted by the classical Greeks and Romans as Cybele, is consistent from the Mesolithic right through to the fall of Roman Paganism. She continued as Mary, but they took away her lions and drum. She was originally the Goddess of mountains, wild places, wild beasts.

I dunno if Göbekli Tepe is good evidence for this theory. I had occasion to read a recent paper (it's available in PDF form - Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus
on sculptures and high reliefs - from Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010) at p. 246:

At Göbekli Tepe, distinctly feminine motifs are lacking
from both the animal and human images. There
is a single exception – a naked woman engraved on
a stone slab placed between the so-called lions’ pillars
(Schmidt 2006.235–237, Fig. 104) (Fig. 13). But
it seems clear that this depiction is not part of the
original decoration, but more probably belongs to a
group of engravings which can be classified as graffiti
(comp. pillar 10: Schmidt 2000.23, Fig. 10b).

You can see a picture of this image in the paper, and why it is described as "grafitti". It is crudely scratched, quite different in style to the other icons at the site (all, insofar as can be identified, male).

This isn't to say that the archaeology disproves that their society was egalitarian (relatively). At nearby sites, as the authors explain, clay figurines are equally male and female:

In
Nevalı Çori, in contrast, of the clay figurines that
have been found nowhere else in such abundance
– 700 in number – over 90% are anthropomorphic
objects, and male and female figures occur in equal
numbers (Morsch 2002). The complete absence of
clay figurines at Göbekli Tepe is most remarkable.
This surely reflects the different functions of the ritual
buildings at each location: while the buildings
of Göbekli Tepe have a possible connection with burial
customs, at Nevalı Çori, it is possible to examine
a village settlement and everyday life. The use of
clay as the material for the male and female figures
found here is not insignificant. The smaller stone figures
that were also discovered exhibit a completely
different and much richer iconographic repertoire
which repeats the stock of motifs associated with the
large stone sculptures and reliefs at Göbekli Tepe.

The notion that this site represents a continuity of a single goddess iconography over thousands of years is highly speculative at best.

The problem here is that the evidence is enegmatic. Firm conclusions should not be drawn from it.

[Johanna]

The identical goddess Cybele is attested from Hittite times until the end of Roman Paganism. That's over 2,000 years of documentation. As for pre-literate cultures: The woman flanked by lions was found at Çatalhöyük predating the Hittites by some 5,000 years. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions. Thanks for citing the examples from Nevalı Çori. Good call.