Sheila Jeffreys - Mans Dominion: The Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Womens Rights

In this feminist critique of the politics of religion, Sheila Jeffreys argues that the renewed rise of religion is harmful to women's human rights. The book seeks to rekindle the criticism of religion as the founding ideology of patriarchy.

Focusing on the three monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this book examines common anti-women attitudes such as male-headship, impurity of women, the need to control women's bodies, and their modern manifestations in multicultural Western states. It points to the incorporation of religious law into legal systems, faith schools and campaigns led by Christian and Islamic organisations against women's rights at the UN, and explains how religious rights threaten to subvert women's rights. Including highly topical chapters on the burqa and the covering of women, and polygamy, this text questions the ideology of multiculturalism, which shields religion from criticism by demanding respect for culture and faith, while ignoring the harm that women suffer from religion.

Man's Dominion is an incisive and polemic text that will be of interest to students of gender studies, religion and politics.

Sheila Jeffreys is a Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Industrial Vagina (2009) and Beauty and Misogyny (2005).

Religion and the eclipse
of women's rights in
world politics

Sheila Jeffreys

First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2012 Sheila Jeffreys

The right of Sheila Jeffreys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jeffreys, Sheila.

Man's dominion: religion and the eclipse of women's rights in

world politics / Sheila Jeffreys.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Sex discrimination against women. 2. Patriarchy. 3. Religion

and politics. 4. Religion Social aspects. 5. Human rights.

I. Title.

HQ1154.J44 2011

201.7208209051 dc22 2011014008

ISBN: 978-0-415-59673-2 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-415-59674-9 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-203-80239-7 (ebook)

Typeset in Bembo
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon

I would like to thank the friends who have read and commented so helpfully on draft chapters of this book. They are Ann Rowett, Kathy Chambers, Vicky Swinbank, Lorene Gottschalk and Jennifer Oriel. Their insights resulted in some big changes. I am grateful to all the members of my feminist network here in Australia, particularly my present and past postgraduate students who continue to give me inspiration, and make me thrilled that a new generation of feminists is now changing the world. I thank, too, my feminist sisters who are represented on a radical feminist discussion list, F-agenda, which nourishes an intellectual and activist community in which my ideas can flourish.

Man's Dominion argues that the domestic and international rise of religion is harmful to women's human rights. I was propelled to write the book by my concern that it was becoming more and more difficult for feminists to criticise religion and point out how much it harms women, at exactly the same time as the increasing political influence of religion was causing serious harms. In the 1970s when I became a feminist in London, atheism was, for most of us, simply an underlying understanding upon which feminist ideas were built. As Dena Attar from the UK states, In the early 70s it was possible to believe that religion was in retreat, that feminism could make the great challenge without meeting much of a response (Attar, 2010, first published 1992, p. 71). Writing in 1992, she says it was no longer possible to hold onto that idea: The extent and viciousness of the backlash becomes clearer all the time (Attar, 2010, p. 72). Attar's concerns are all much more relevant 20 years later. There has been a strong activist feminist response to fundamentalism in countries all over the world, but critical writing and action on religion that is not identified as fundamentalist has been conspicuous by its absence. I argue that the distinction between fundamentalism and religion is problematic, because it can make the latter seem benign, and criticism of it seem churlish, in the face of a pressing emergency. This book is about the three monotheistic religions in general and not just fundamentalism.

Very useful books showing up the misogyny of Christianity were written by feminists who were recovering from their immersion in religious ideology in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly Mary Daly's very significant, Beyond God the Father (Daly, 1985b) I paid little attention to these books at the time because I considered, like other progressive intellectuals, that religion would die out. When I read Daly's work today it seems very brave, because the idea that religion must be challenged, rather than respected, has come to be seen as rather offensive in multicultural societies and in communities dominated by the politics of difference. I have written this book in order to recover lost ground, to assert once more that which generations of feminist activists and theorists have thought too obvious to mention: that all religions were invented in historical situations where women were radically subordinate to men, and reflect their odious origins in their ideas and practices. I aim to open up the space for debate once more so that feminists may criticise religion without feeling under pressure to show respect.