# Which religions treat women and men as equals? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 11, 2026, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552 "2026-01-11T02:56:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/122 "2026-01-20T14:48:57Z")
Part of it is just that the Old Testament is a lot larger than the New, so if you’re looking for Bible verses to justify any particular view (good or bad), you’re more likely to find them there. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/123 "2026-01-20T14:51:37Z")
Those are conveniently not among the Noahide Laws. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/124 "2026-01-20T16:01:05Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > they are always quoting Leviticus, or other Old Testament books in order to justify their ideas about the roles of men and women, or their attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people. Which they have only read in bad translation. Sometimes paraphrase, and mistake made in the gospels or by Paul are always reproduced, at the expense of the original. Can we refer to it as Jewish bible and Christian bible or something? calling the Torah and Prophets the “OT” hurts me. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/125 "2026-01-20T16:07:49Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Can we refer to it as Jewish bible and Christian bible or something? calling the Torah and Prophets the “OT” hurts me. I think it depends on the context, but if we’re referring to what Dominionists or Christians are quoting, I think that “Old Testament” is the clearest and most accurate term. The “Jewish Bible” can, depending on context, refer to just the Torah, or to the Torah combined with a variety of other books, which may be more or less than the set of books referred to as the “Old Testament” (though even “Old Testament” still has some ambiguity, depending on whether you include the deuterocanonical/apocryphal books like Sirach and Malachi). Case in point, you refer there to “the Torah and the Prophets”, but a Christian referring to “the Old Testament” would also include the Psalms, Proverbs, the history books like Judges and Kings, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/126 "2026-01-20T16:08:13Z")
I think “the Jewish Bible” and “the New Testament” works. The Christian Bible includes the Jewish Bible. The split i suggest leaves out some apocrypha included in the Catholic (and some other) versions of the Christian Bible, but i don’t think they are generally germane to the discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/127 "2026-01-20T16:10:45Z")
The phrase “Old Testament”, though, is somewhat offensive to Jews, since it implies that some other Testament of equal worth exists. I refer to the “NT” as “the Christian scriptures”. I usually call the Bible just “the Bible” or “Tanakh”, but I’ll use “the Jewish scriptures” if the context calls for disambiguation. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/128 "2026-01-20T16:13:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Case in point, you refer there to “the Torah and the Prophets”, but a Christian referring to “the Old Testament” would also include the Psalms, Proverbs, the history books like Judges and Kings, and so on. Nitpick: Jews divide the Bible into three sections: Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Psalms and Proverbs are Writings, but the historical books are considered part of the Prophets. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/129 "2026-01-20T17:07:16Z")
Hm, I didn’t know that. The categorizations of the books I’ve seen (mostly written by Christians) break them up into a lot more categories than that: Torah, Prophets (in which category Christians also include Revelation), Histories (in which category Christians also include Acts of the Apostles), Wisdom Books (I can’t remember if Psalms were in there, or their own category), Epistles and Gospels (these last two being found only in the New Testament). Still, “the Jewish Bible” can mean different things in different contexts, such as just the Torah, the Torah plus Prophets (obviously not including Revelation), the Torah, Prophets, and Writings (mostly the same set of books as what Christians call the “Old Testament”), all of those plus possibly the Talmud (which most Christians don’t even know exists), etc. And the context in which it’s most often relevant is Christians and Dominionists quoting it, and both of those religions refer to “the Old Testament”, so that’s why I think that’s the clearest term in those contexts. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/130 "2026-01-20T19:11:22Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > calling the Torah and Prophets the “OT” hurts me. As I understand it, the Torah actually has different translation and even some different books. The Catholic and Protestant Bibles contain different books as well, and the Gnostic and Ethiopian even more books that are not included by any of the others. So, to me, the OT of a Christian Bible, and the Torah, are two different things entirely. Does that help? And honestly, if these “Christians” who spend their lives justifying horrors by quoting scriptures could somehow be forced to read the Talmud on the subjects, then we wouldn’t have any of these problems. Because it’s always quite clear that they don’t understand the scriptures they are quoting. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/131 "2026-01-20T19:17:00Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > So the OT of a Christian Bible, and the Torah, are two different things entirely. Heck, even “the OT of a Christian Bible” varies, quite a bit, depending on denomination. The canonical Catholic OT contains 46 books, the Eastern Orthodox OT contains between 48 and 54 books, and Protestant OTs usually contain 39 books. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/132 "2026-01-20T20:06:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Still, “the Jewish Bible” can mean different things in different contexts, such as just the Torah, the Torah plus Prophets (obviously not including Revelation), the Torah, Prophets, and Writings (mostly the same set of books as what Christians call the “Old Testament”), all of those plus possibly the Talmud Naw, the “Jewish Bible” pretty much means the Tanach. Torah, Prophets, and Writings. The Talmud is a different beast. The Torah is the Torah. And it’s unusual to talk about specifically the Torah plus the Prophets. It’s not the same as “the old testament” partly because of the different perspective, but also because every Christian sect picks which books go into their Bible, and most pick differently from the Jews. And also, they always order the books differently from the Jews. But we are wandering pretty far down this rabbit hole, which isn’t closely related to which religions treat woman equally. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2026, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/133 "2026-01-20T23:51:17Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > The phrase “Old Testament”, though, is somewhat offensive to Jews, since it implies that some other Testament of equal worth exists. Such shade exists in other religions. In Buddhism there are two dominant paths known as the Great Vehicle (Mahayana Buddhism) and Lesser Vehicle (Theravadan Buddhism.) Seems to me that Mahayana is a bit big for its britches considering Theravadan Buddhism is the oldest practice, hewing most closely to the Buddha’s teachings, and Mahayana came later and added a bunch of shit. Mahayana is all over the place. Zen is Mahayana but strikingly different in its absence of deities and absence of, well, what I would consider magic. That’s because Zen developed in China and in order to survive adapted the widely practiced Daoism to get bodies in temples. It has a different lineage than a lot of Mahayana practices. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/134 "2026-01-21T04:49:11Z")
Do the practicioners of theravada Buddhism call it that, “lesser vehicle”, or do they use other names? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/135 "2026-01-21T06:53:57Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Do the practicioners of theravada Buddhism call it that, “lesser vehicle” Definitely not— it is a kind of diss term given to [at least some] old-school Buddhists by the Mahayana. In any case, _A History of Indian Buddhism_ asserts that “No Buddhist groups ever referred to themselves as [Lesser Vehicle]”. As for how differences in how women are regarded between groups, as was mentioned before (correct me if I am wrong!!), it seems very difficult to generalize, even if we restrict ourselves to Theraveda traditions. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/136 "2026-01-21T13:39:19Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Seems to me that Mahayana is a bit big for its britches considering Theravadan Buddhism is the oldest practice From what I have read, it seems to me that Buddhism wasn’t originally a ‘religion’ at all, in the sense of having one or more deities? Isn’t there a passage somewhere in which Buddha is asked about a deity and says something to the effect of “I make no pronouncement about such matters.” ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/137 "2026-01-21T15:16:28Z")
The central tenet of Buddhism is not “worshipping god”. 🙂 Now, there is an elaborate [Buddhist cosmology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology) with “lower” and “higher” beings , such as humans and animals but also gods and Brahmas. On one hand, this is not supposed to be a literal description— e.g. maybe one can imagine “hell” as a kind of mental state. On the other hand, it is not that simple, either; I might as well quote from _The Foundations of Buddhism_, Oxford University Press: > [@](#): > > I have suggested that the elaborate Buddhist cosmological scheme that we have been considering is in part to be understood by reference to Buddhist psychology. The equivalence between psychology and cosmology is old and to be regarded as intrinsic to the system and not a stratagem employed by Buddhist modernist apologetics in order to render a primitive, pre-modern understanding of the world palatable to contemporary tastes. Yet this should not be taken as meaning that Buddhist cosmological descriptions were traditionally read simply as accounts of mental states in symbolic and imaginative language. Quite clearly they were not, nor are they so read in traditional Buddhist cultures today. For many Buddhists, in the present as in the past, the beings and realms described in the cosmology are as ‘real’ as the Queen of England and Buckingham Palace. Yet equally clearly there can be intellectually more naïve and more sophisticated ways of understanding the Buddhist cosmological world-view. But again we should avoid coming to the conclusion that somehow > the psychological interpretation represents the ‘real’ Buddhist understanding, whereas a literal understanding feeds the popular imagination and, as such, must be suffered by sophisticated intellectuals. What we have to do with here is a question of a different conception of the nature of ‘reality’: a conception that allows what we would call a psychological and symbolic interpretation to coexist with a literal interpretation. Whatever ultimate interpretation one puts on traditional Buddhist cosmology, it remains a flexible ·framework within which to make sense of a rich spectrum of experience. > > Nevertheless at another practical level this cosmological framework has allowed Buddhism to accommodate and take under its wing certain aspects of what might be called, for want of a better term, ‘folk religion’. This process of accommodation is as old as Buddhism itself—perhaps older. Many of the gods and different kinds of being found in the ancient cosmology have been absorbed into the Buddhist scheme of things from pre-existing folk and religious traditions… > [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > Isn’t there a passage somewhere in which Buddha is asked about a deity and says something to the effect of “I make no pronouncement about such matters.” The Buddha indeed refused to give categorical answers about the nature of the universe. However, note that he did tell a lot of stories and parables, including ones that mention “devas” and so on. As the quote at the end indicates, this kind of stuff existed in Indian mythology. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/138 "2026-01-21T15:27:46Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > The former Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada was a woman: Technically the previous Supreme Governor of the Church of England was a woman (being QE II, of course). But then you get into the niggling about how much the monarch actually heads the Church. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/139 "2026-01-21T16:16:50Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > The Buddha indeed refused to give categorical answers about the nature of the universe. However, note that he did tell a lot of stories and parables, An interesting question is how much of the sayings ascribed to Buddha are in fact anything like verbatim? If I’m reading Wikipedia correctly, the first written references were something like 3 centuries after his death. Substantially longer than the time between the life of Jesus and the gospels. Time enough for a lot of exegesis and mythology to creep in….? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/140 "2026-01-21T17:29:48Z")
> [@xtenkfarpl](#): > > From what I have read, it seems to me that Buddhism wasn’t originally a ‘religion’ at all, in the sense of having one or more deities? I’ll just add to DPRK’s excellent reply that Buddhism is organized around the Four Noble Truths and believing those things are true is pretty much what makes you a Buddhist. This is the shorthand as I’m in a diner: 1. Life is suffering, loosely translated, I think the original text means something like an axle on a cart misaligned. 2. The reason we suffer is desire, or craving. We pin our happiness on getting the things we want and avoiding the things we don’t want. 3. There is a way out of suffering - the extinction of desire. 4. This is achieved through following the Noble Eightfold Path. Buddhists love them some lists. You can’t imagine how many lists. So I guess you could call those articles of faith, of a sort. It’s not faith in deities that makes you a Buddhist but whether or not you believe these four things. And I guess I would add that another common factor is whether or not you believe that the Buddha achieved enlightenment and thus that he knew what he was talking about when he dispensed this advice. Beyond that - atheism, God or gods, knock yourself out. Thich Naht Hanh was famously a Zen Buddhist and a Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2026, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552/141 "2026-01-21T17:31:03Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Technically the previous Supreme Governor of the Church of England was a woman (being QE II, of course). But then you get into the niggling about how much the monarch actually heads the Church. In that case, wasn’t QE I the Supreme Governor of the COE at one time? following her father and brother? I’m not sure who would have been head during the reign of Mary I (Bloody Mary), but Elizabeth would have been head during her own reign. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-religions-treat-women-and-men-as-equals/1026552.md?page=8)