Some Whys and Wherefores

Do goddess-oriented cultures necessarily translate into higher status of women? What exactly did it do for the women in those socieities? The Hindus and the Greeks had a rich pantheon of Goddesses. The Abrahamic religions had none (or almost none). Going by these assumptions one would think that the women in India and Greece would be as fearless and free as Kali or Athena, and the Jewish and Christian women would be at the lowest rung on the social ladder. The Tao Te Ching philosophy gave a lot of importance to the feminine principle but it left the common women in China largely untouched. When one compares the theories of creation across religions Hinduism largely approaches this from a balanced prakrti-purusha model as opposed to Eve being fashioned out of Adam's rib. Judaism has a genderless God but it incorporates a gendered religion in its rituals. Yet it baffles me that that status of Hindu women has largely changed only in the last 5 decades or so.

Examining evidence after evidence it almost seems to drive us towards the conclusion that the presence of Goddesses or the internal structure of a religion or elevated statuses of a nurturing mother Goddess hardly empowered the real life of a woman in those societies. Why do I say this? Because it is a simplistic assumption that religion and religious myths and theories by themselves empower. They merely save as a framework over which other power and control structures develop - social customs, education, economic independence, positions of power in religious institutions, gender and familial roles and the time that gets devoted to them. Familial roles by themselves are common across cultures. Jewish and Christian women are as much wives and mothers as are Hindu women. In orthodox Judaism women were largely subjected to gender roles and frequently relegated to secondary positions. So Why is it that we are led to believe that the Women of the West(chrisitianity to be specific) are liberated than those of the East? When one examines the women's spaces and evaluates it in terms of education, exit and alternative options in personal and professional lives, freedom of choice, availability of public spaces to women, it does seem to indicate that Western Women on an average has better options than the Eastern. Of course an urban educated, professional city-dweller to city-dweller comparison would not work.

Is it just education and exposure? Literacy rates as numbers for education is misleading. Going by Kerala's numbers, it seems unimaginable that Kerala with such a high literacy rate has a high rate of gender violence. A woman who can read and sign her name or attended middle school is considered literate. So when we mention education as empowerment it makes sense to qualify what is meant by education. However education does become a determining factor when comparing Jewish and Christian women with their Hindu and Islamic counterparts. The former had a headway of almost a century on education and employment over the latter and the concept of education was education enough to earn a living as opposed to learning to read and write.. Similarly if economic independence were a sole criteria then many of blue-collared working women would be free from the shackles of husbands who come back home intoxicated and demanding for more money. It is meaningful only if it translates to power in a household that comes with economic independence and good buying power.With buying power comes confidence. I think good education and sustainable employment with higher pay is a crucial factor.

I would like to attribute these differences largely to hardened gender roles and social customs and social expectations. By social customs I include the inequities that are part of the structure , permeability and acceptance of change , perception of marriages in our society, exit options in marriages, social stigma associated with divorces, property rights, the status before and after marriage and to a great extent the joint-family structure and exclusive commitment to motherhood. Another factor which could have a bearing upon this is the amount of invasion a society is subject to. Hindu society could have adopted protectionist modes against invading cultures.

** For those who say that Hindu women are emanicipated because a small percentage of urban educated are rising up the so-called corporate ladders in technology shops or even heading companies.. As of 2001, the female literacy rate is 54% which means a little less than half the women in the country are illiterate.
** Islam has intentionally been omitted in this analysis because of colored perceptions and the influences of the faith due to theocratic Governments.
** That each religion is not a monolith but composed of several subcultures is a given but I still think there are generalities that could be applied to WestBengal and TamilNadu or Kerala and Bihar.
** I am not advocating a reductionist model but that the position of women in each religion is a result of an interplay of a large number of factors over many centuries but this is just an attempt at examination of why this is different in different religions and societies.