The Role of Religion and Faith in Women’s Rights

December 3, 2021

By Chenai Mangachena (College ’22 and Harvard Center for African Studies Intern) and Li-Ming Pan (Harvard Center for African Studies Communications)

On December 1, 2021, the Center for African Studies hosted the Folorunso Alakija Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Public Life in Africa.

This panel discussion focused on the role of religion and faith in women’s rights. The panelists included Dr. Angela Dwamena-Aboagye (Lawyer, Women’s Empowerment Advocate & Executive Director of The Ark Foundation, Ghana), Professor Sarojini Nadar (Desmond Tutu South African Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Dr. Fatou Sow (Researcher in Sociology, University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal & University Paris Diderot, France), and was moderated by Professor Leila Ahmed (Victor S. Thomas Research Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School).

Religion and Public Life Event on Women's Right Screenshot

A key issue that exists is that globally dominant religions are internally divided, with multiple interpretations and all claiming to be the true interpretation. The discussion centered around multiple lines of thought, including how there can be conflicts between the rights of women agreed upon globally by organizations like the United Nations and religious beliefs held in communities across the world. Feminists are often wrongly assumed to be against religion, when in fact feminists can be, among other things, people of faith. The panel discussed geopolitical dimensions, highlighting inequalities in power across religions and races. There was also notable focus on the worldwide issue of mass violence against women, the #SayHerName movement (a social movement that seeks to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-black violence in the United States), and the problems involved in both legislation and leveraging religious reform. In many places, the progress of implementing legislation guaranteeing women’s rights has been slow. Some countries lawfully recognize the fact that all human beings are equal, but the reality is often different; in Senegal, for example, female genital mutilation is still widespread even though a law was passed in 1999 to ban the practice.

Nadar began her thoughts by raising the issue on the glaring absence of the word “feminism” in the topic of the discussion. The question was raised of what exactly it means to consider women’s rights in the context of faith without discussing feminism, or to discuss physical and sexual violence in the context of faith without including feminism. Reductionist views, tropes of coupling women and children as if women are children, and the assumption of the God-ordained or natural vulnerability of women and children were among schools of thought that were criticized. Discussion to bring about reform is often held in a setting that seeks to dismiss the feminist roots of the issue of the fight against violation of women’s rights, such as gender-based violence.

An important aspect of preventing violence against women is the law; however, the panelists point out that the law is not self-implementing, as evidenced by the fact that countries like South Africa—with among the most legislation regarding women’s rights—are among the ones with the ongoing increase in violence against women. The obscuring of feminism in discourses done without feminist development thus can result in grand gestures made with no real impact.

According to the panelists, though governments are secularized, Africa in general is highly religious, and everywhere one goes faith is a part of people’s lives. There is a duality that exists often in the matters of faith. Faith can be in agreement or in contention with the issue of women’s rights. There is also compartmentalization of faith and women’s rights when in reality these spheres in some senses support each other. The interaction of these spheres is leading to the issue of evolving rights, as evidenced by increases in activists who support certain causes and not others (for example, women’s rights activists who are people of faith may fight against domestic violence but not support abortion as it is against their beliefs).

Ahmed highlighted that each speaker shared troubling and difficult situations and wanted to hear what the way forward would be from the speaker’s point of view. Nadar focused on the tools to understand what is going on with women’s rights when they are not upheld. She hopes to move towards practical solutions that are based on a deep theoretical understanding of the problem. For Dwamena-Aboagye, she believes the way forward is that everyone will keep talking about what people see as problematic to continue the engagement of different groups of people to come to an understanding. “In front of colonization, imperialism, globalization, we cannot challenge African culture.” Sow wants to us to debate and deconstruct African culture as some of those traditions may be hurting women but acknowledges the complexities of challenging culture that is closely tied to religion. There is no simple way forward and we know that the audience want the conversation to continue beyond this panel discussion.

You can find a recording of the panel discussion on our Vimeo page here: https://vimeo.com/662392975