The Handmaid’s Tale brings up many modern day issues that continue to occur, but the major one is the mistreatment of women in religion. We all already know how Islam has a male dominant culture, but a lot of other religions have sexism ingrained in them too. This article, by the Huffington Post, talks about how sexism exists in Christianity. “In many world religions, women are making inroads in religious professions but the trend is resisted by the Catholic Church that allows women to serve as nuns but bans ordination.” Women are not allowed to hold the same position of a man, which is unreasonable, because there is no logical reason prohibiting women to hold the same religious reason as men. In fact, other countries like Denmark or Sweden “ordains women and admits them as bishops.” Women have more religious freedom in other countries than they do here. In the olden times, in Greece, women had a leading role in religious rituals. “This was true in ancient Greece, for example, where priestesses presided over festivals in honor of the god Dionysus, but this was nevertheless a heavily male-dominated society and the priestesses did not advocate female domination.” Despite them being important in religion however, they were still unequal to men in a societal way.
Concentrating on how society has sexism within it reveals parallels to sexism in religion. I brought up Sweden and Denmark as an example before, and it illustrates perfectly how where women are allowed to achieve the highest professions, they’re also more equality between men and women in church positions. “So countries like Sweden and Denmark in which women achieve at the highest level in most professions -- and are broadly represented in political life -- are also places where women serve as ministers and adopt other leadership roles in churches.” Now looking at the society in the US, it’s easy to see that not many women are in politics. Comparatively, not many women are allowed to be part of higher church positions, like bishops in Sweden and Denmark. All in all, religion, in general, is more in favor of men than women. It’s clearly seen in The Handmaid’s Tale because the men have all the power, like the Commanders, but the women are essentially just used for breeding purposes.
Concentrating on how society has sexism within it reveals parallels to sexism in religion. I brought up Sweden and Denmark as an example before, and it illustrates perfectly how where women are allowed to achieve the highest professions, they’re also more equality between men and women in church positions. “So countries like Sweden and Denmark in which women achieve at the highest level in most professions -- and are broadly represented in political life -- are also places where women serve as ministers and adopt other leadership roles in churches.” Now looking at the society in the US, it’s easy to see that not many women are in politics. Comparatively, not many women are allowed to be part of higher church positions, like bishops in Sweden and Denmark. All in all, religion, in general, is more in favor of men than women. It’s clearly seen in The Handmaid’s Tale because the men have all the power, like the Commanders, but the women are essentially just used for breeding purposes.
I really liked how you incorporated various elements, both religious and political, into this blog post. I had never really though much about the parallels between politics and religion before in regards to women's rights.
ReplyDeleteI think that even though it doesn't seem right, women will always hold a lower status when it comes to religion. Religion has been around longer than almost anything, and I don't think that it is going to change any time soon. Politics should, however, be more welcoming to women, and because politics change so often, it shouldn't be as hard to welcome women as it is now.
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