Manipulating and Controlling Women through Religions and Myths

The first question is, who authored most of the religious dogma, myths, and other belief systems

that we have at present? Until now, that is to say throughout all previous history, there has been a

sharp gender asymmetry in the hierarchy of knowledge, and nowhere is this more clearly

institutionalized than in religion(). The written or oral creeds and their interpretation have for

centuries dictated the societal roles that men or women played. Our epics, myths, and

commandments arose from the creativity or imaginings of patriarchal society. The commonality

of these expressions usually commanded woman’s subservience to the male superior its author.

Before the emergence of women empowerment, it was the woman’s role to submit herself to the

husband no matter what he is and did. If the setting was the home, she has to serve her king-the

husband. Culture has dictated terms of what is feminine in behavior and appearance.

Early Roman religious life has man as the dominant if not having the monopoly in a Roman city’s

affairs. In the religious life of Rome we find reflected both the authority of the male members of

society and the importance of the family as a unit of society. Women are as always not an active

participant in its activities. Women are to a certain extent excluded from cult activities, not least

in the public arena. They do not hold important positions of authority.Some may disagree with

this and points to the so-called Vestal Virgins. Hinnels () points out that with the absence of

women from public religious life there was one major exception, though that was a very

significant one. The Vestal Virgins, the female priests of the cult of Vesta, were six women

recruited as children of six years old and committed to the preservation of their virginity and the

service of the goddess for thirty years. They were concerned with a very wide range of cults and

rituals and it is clear that the security and health of the whole community depended on the

maintenance of their duties. They had to keep the sacred fire on the hearth of Vesta burning at all

times. In periods of extreme danger, the city sometimes turned on them and accused them of
unchastity, evidently seeking to blame them for the crisis. If found guilty they were buried alive

at the limit of the city. In some theories, they were originally the daughters of the old kings of

Rome, so that their relationship to the fire and the hearth echoed the duties of the ordinary

household. The theories are more attractive than reliable. Important though the Vestals may have

been, they were no more than a single exception to the general exclusion of women from public

positions of authority or power in the public life of Rome. Some women in the late Republic and

early Empire did achieve personal power and influence, but this did not change the basic rules by

which social institutions operated.

If you are a Vestal virgin, your lifespan is dependent on the relative period of peace that your city

enjoys. Otherwise being fired, terminated, and buried at the limit of the city is not an attractive

prospect.

Roman and Greek mythology may have given women important roles in their godhoods, since we

have Athena, Demeter, Juno, and Aprodite, but the important chief position is always to the man-

Jupiter or Zeus.

For the world’s contemporary chief religions: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and the

Confucian credos have directed that it is the primary duty of women to be obedient and devoted.

The laws that enforce them are based on the existing religious and cultural belief systems and

their derivations.

When women are physically disfigured through foot binding and genital mutilation society, it is

in compliance to tradition. How do these disfigurementsserved any purpose to the woman or the

man? There have been disagreements as to the reason why footbinding has existed for a long

time in China. Patricia Ebrey ()posits the following:

Footbinding was an alteration of the body that changed everything about a

woman’s physical being. Because the ideal upper-class man was by Song times a

relatively subdued and refined figure, he might seem effeminate unless women
 could be made even more delicate, reticent, and stationary. What better than tiny

feet to accomplish this?

For the footbound Chinese woman, the debilitation confined her to the home and

reinforced her role as the husband’s sole possession. Refinement and being subdued is no

excuse for this abominable act. Female genital mutilation has been a tradition of many

African tribal societies. It is a female circumcision done to prepare a young girl for

marriage. This is a very unhygienic and therefore a very dangerous practice. Supposedly,

mutilation ensures that the woman do not go astray since that part of her that makes her

commit a sin has been removed. This inculcates a guilty feeling to the girls mind and

reinforces the belief that women are morally weaker and therefore needed to be put in

their position of low esteem. Such are the heavy prices that woman has to pay for being a

woman. Gladly, their being widespread isconfined in the past.

Religion, myths, and our beliefs systems favor the man and ensure his dominance over the

woman. The erstwhile Taliban regime of Afghanistan is the contemporary extreme believer of

this.

Under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at the beginning of the twenty-first

century, for example, punishment for noncompliance with brutally extreme

restrictions on women’s appearance and behavior included public flogging and

execution. Compulsion, however, is not the only or even necessarily the most

effective means for encouraging women to subscribe to femininity norms. Social

rewards and personal satisfaction are also motivators. Piety is its own reward for

a woman of any faith who believes she is behaving in accordance with divine

will. Depending on how she interprets her faith, a contemporary Muslim woman

may thus signal her femininity and her piety by choosing to wear the veil

whether she lives under a theocratic or a secular political system. Her choice to

veil may be reinforced by additional rewards, such as greater respect and

 personal autonomy accorded to her by her family and the local Muslim

community().

If you are publicly flogged for wearing a knee-length dress, it is not time to fire your dressmaker

it is appropriate to question if the punishment is commensurate with the offense. If jihadists

believed that bombing innocent civilians will ensure them heavenly virgins, what will women

suicide bombers get? Making a distortion of a religious belief by subordinating women as men’s

rewards acquits women from suspicion of establishing that belief.

The Judeo-Christian belief is not spared from instilling guilty feeling and low-esteem to women.

Consider this passage from Numbers 5:30:

. . . or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife.

The priest is to make her stand before the LORD and is to apply this entire law to

her.

The operative word hereis “suspicion”. If you are suspected by your husband of having

been unfaithful, you will be treated in the same manner as those proven to be guilty of the

same. This could be a Damocles sword hanging over the head of the woman as she is

proven once again to be not having the same rights as the man. What do you expect when

your subsidiary position was ensured during creation when you were drawn from the rib

of Adam. Children of Eve have borne their guilt when the first woman caused the man to

transgress the law of God by eating that forsaken fruit. The woman may blame the snake

who had scurried away but she had to stay by her man.This guilty feeling has always

been foisted to the woman since paradise was lost. In the same vein that the Nazis

annihilated the Jews for having caused the crucifixation of the Christ. In the Old

Testament, having the same blood does not ensure the needed affection and respect;

nothing is more abominable than the story of Lot who offered his two virgin daughters to

the unruly crowd who wanted to sodomize guests.

Ge. 19:5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you
 tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with

them.”

Ge. 19:6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him

Ge. 19:7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.

Ge. 19:8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a

man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you

like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they

have come under the protection of my roof.”

If biblical characters and the Mosaic Law subordinate women to men, you cannot expect

a different perspective from the society where these belief systems are integrated. When

Jewish and Muslim men became polygamous, nothing is wrong about it, but when

women have more than one sexual relationyou can surely expect a stoning. In some parts

of part of Tibet, polyandry is not frowned up, but Tibet is a very small country whose

religious influence is confined within its small borders.

Hindu Universe, an internet website explained that in Hinduism the religious root of

women's oppression stems from the belief that the son and daughter are not inherently

equal. Though many sages argued that since both come from the father's body, there is no

difference between the two, ritual status of the son is higher. Perhaps this belief that "if a

man's vitality is greater then a son would be produced, but if a woman's vitality is greater

then a daughter would be produced" is also responsible. Men looked upon their sons "as

mirrors of the father". A son therefore conducts the funeral ceremony of the parents.

Though in absence of a son, a daughter can also perform them, it is only in absence of a

brother. A daughter is seen as belonging ultimately not to her father's family, but to her

husband's. So the first thing that must be done is to remove this idea that a son is more

value and that daughters are born to go to another's house.

Conclusion

There is something wrong with the way women were manipulated and controlled in the

pastapparently in compliance with the written and traditional beliefs. If this was not so,

widespread women empowerment at present would not have been possible. The United

Nations’ Millennium Declaration pledges explicitly "to combat all forms of violence

against women and to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)()". And it further recognizes the importance of

promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment as an effective pathway for

combating poverty, hunger and disease and for stimulating truly sustainable development.

Such declaration does not ensure that manipulation and control of women will cease in

some corners of the world. Yet this global consensus is an indication that indeed

misconceptions about gender roles are existing and should therefore be corrected. If this

is a violation of Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and other religious precepts, why then

had this been adopted by many countries who had practiced the belief systems based on

these religions? Why the shift to expanding women roles and even placing them in

positions of leaderships in many countries? We can only conclude that this is an

acceptance of women having been contained for so long. This is a silent acquiescence

that indeed the forefathers and not the foremothers may have treated the children of Eve

unjustly.

References

Buckley, Patricia. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese
Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley: University of California, 1993.

Hinnels, John R. Ed. A Handbook of ancient Religions. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2007.
Hoodfar, Homa and Homa Hoodfar. More Than Clothing:Veiling as an Adaptive
Strategy. Toronto: Women's Press, 203.

King, Ursula. Religion and Gender: Embedded Patterns, Interwoven

Frameworks. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

The Ages Digital Library. The Holy Bible. Albany: Ages Software, 1996.

Waldorf, Lee. Pathway to Gender Equality. United Nations Fund for Women,
n.d.