Gender and Religion

Articles related to development issues concerning religion with respect to (mainly) women.

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PAKISTAN'S MODERATES ARE BEATEN IN PUBLIC, By Ali Dayan Hasan, June 15, 2005. 'Teach the bitch a lesson. Strip her in public." As one of the police officers told me, these were the orders issued by their bosses. The police beat the woman with batons in the full glare of the news media, tore her shirt off and, though they failed to take off her baggy trousers, certainly tried their best.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN PAKISTAN: THE WOMAN WHO DARED TO CRY RAPE, BY Jan McGirk, June 15, 2005. On a terrible June day three years ago, 14 men from the dominant Mastoi tribe in Meeranwalla volunteered to rape Ms Mai as a way to settle a score after her 12-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was seen walking with a Mastoi girl.

POVERTY OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN, By Benazir Bhutto, October 22, 2004
Miriam’s is a typical family set-up in rural Pakistan. Every morning, she sends her two eldest sons to the village school while she, her only surviving daughter, and her youngest son, aged one, remain at home. The daughter looks after the infant and assists her mother in the household and the fields.

PROJECT ‘END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN’ LAUNCHED IN PAKISTAN, Pakistan Times Staff Report, June 14, 2004
The ‘Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW)” project co-funded by Oxfam GB and EU and launched at a local hotel here Monday hoped that women will be more secure in their homes and public places as a result of initiatives to be taken under the project.

FEMALE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SEEKS SUPPORT IN AFGHANISTAN, January 25, 2004
Afghanistan's first female presidential candidate doctor Massouda Jalal sits in her comfortable apartment in Kabul's Microrayon district and tries to estimate the political support she will receive in the country's upcoming elections.

WAR ON HEADSCARVES, Economist, UK, February 5, 2004
France and Britain have radically different approaches to ethnic and religious diversity. Each can learn from the other.

BUILDING WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN AFGHANISTAN, UNIFEM

CRIME AGAINST WOMEN, By R. D. SHARMA, THE HINDU, May 15, 2001
The Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 has been amended twice to make its provisions more stringent and punitive. The Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act have also been changed simultaneously to deal effectively with not only dowry deaths but also the cases of cruelty to married women. Similarly, suitable modifications in the law against rape have been incorporated to remove some of its drawbacks. But all these changes have not reduced the frequency of crime at all.

SPIRITED WOMEN: Gender, Religion, & Cultural Identity in the Nepal Himalaya, Book Review, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, UK, Volume 4 1997.
This is an impressive book that examines common assumptions about the universality of Western constructions of gender and power.

ACTIVIST WOMEN IN BUDDHISM celebrates Aung San Suu Kyi, Ven. Ngawang Sangdrol and others.