Quote:
Originally posted by baltassoc
It is certainly true that some Christian sects treat women more poorly than some branches of Islam. Whether on average the same is true is a more intricate question, and I can easily concede the answer is probably that Christianity on a whole treats women better. But I'm not sure that answer is very helpful.
|
I'm presuming that analysis, which is appropriate, is not undertaken in a vacuum, but rather in an historical and social context. The poor treatment of fundamentalist Islam of women should be measured against non-Islamic treatment of women in the same culture --- take sub-Saharan Africa, for example. Similarly, the poor treatment of women in Christianity should be measured against the non-Christian treatment of women in the same culture --- take Arkansas, for example.
The question is whether the religion is an improvement over secularism in each religion's region. The answer in the case of fundamentalist Islam is more often "yes" than it is in the case of fundamentalist Christianity, because Christianity predominates in regions in which secularism coincides with economic prosperity, freedom of travel, and freedom of marriage, three cultural contexts that benefit secular women but are denied to women in the same region for religious reasons.
