The application of women’s rights to the religions of the world have prompted highly contentious debates. This volume explores the many intricate issues raised in such interactions. The chapters in this volume are authored by women scholars of religion from diverse regions of the world, representing a plurality of religions, including indigenous religions. To enrich this already complex undertaking, four philosophers and legal scholars have also contributed. Their chapters help to clarify present challenges and envision innovative possibilities. The volume identifies archaic attitudes involving exclusionary regulations and controversial gender-specific practices. More contemporary impasses, such as individualism, so prevalent in western rights debates, and the unitary model of human rights, where “one size fits all,” as promulgated in the west, are also appraised. Current constructive moves, especially expanding the notion of rights to involve relationships, are acknowledged. A primary concern of this volume is that of fostering future such collaborations of women advocates of gender justice.

In her 2014 PhD study on The Role of African Christian Churches in Dealing with Sexual Violence against Women: The Case of the DRC, Rwanda and Liberia, Elisabet le Roux (Le Roux 2014, 201–204), concludes that in these three post-conflict African states, neither governments and states, nor international security and peacekeeping bodies, nor various CSOs, including the churches, manage (or even try) to create a culture of accountability for war and post-war rape. Le Roux’s research participants widely echo the sentiment of gynaecologist for Panzi Hospital’s center for survivors of sexual violence in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereafter DRC), doctor Neema Rukunghu. Linking the post-war child rapes in communities with the legacy of war rape, Rukunghu says men do not rape because they believe sex with a virgin girl may bring them wealth or cure them of disease (while they may in fact believe these things); instead, “they do it because they know that there is no prison waiting for them, no death penalty. They know they can get away with it” (Baker 2016). Not only, Le Roux finds, are there no legal consequences for rape, but equally there are no social sanctions, and no strong condemnation emanating from the influential religious leadership. In all three countries Le Roux found that the churches “have a good record of effectively filling roles usually associated with the state.” Moreover, the vast majority of people in these countries (up to 90%) are affiliated to at least one of these churches and “consider them to have authority and social impact … and the ability to influence behaviour, facilitate social change, and provide societal solidarity and cohesion,” and importantly, they have often been instrumental in fighting for social justice. She thus hypothesizes that they can play a key role in addressing sexual violence – both in preventing and remedying the phenomenon at grassroots level – and most of her informants underwrite this view. Allowing for important differences between the different contexts – for example the direct involvement of the Catholic Church in Rwanda in the genocide – Le Roux however found on a general level that the African Christian churches in all three these countries at the very least do not address the problem of sexual violence. In fact, she found that churches “vary from non-involvement (and a form of lethargy) to active promotion of sexual violence against women” (Le Roux 2014, 197). Most churches indirectly promote male sexual violence through their patriarchal teachings, all-male leadership structures, and most damagingly, in their overtly censuring responses to sexual violence survivors. These churches play a key role in silencing and stigmatizing congregation members who are such survivors. They do not openly discuss or critique sexual violence against women. In this, Le Roux (2014: 197) claims, the churches “largely reflect community attitudes, beliefs and practices in their opinions and treatment of sexual violence survivors.” The furthest most churches will go in acknowledging the problem is through providing support in the form of food and clothing when survivors become destitute. They fail utterly to engage with the root causes of sexual violence. By silencing, shaming and stigmatizing the victims of male sexual violence, the churches largely reflect the attitudes of society, which includes blaming the victim. Husbands also often adopt or replicate this attitude, regarding a raped spouse as an immense threat to their own masculinity, to which they then ‘justly’ respond with violence and abuse of their own. Also, children who are suspected to be products of rape are very often actively shunned, neglected, beaten and/or raped. By punishing sexual violence survivors, these churches, Le Roux argues, “enforce their [sexual] beliefs and values – such as the importance of virginity, chastity, purity, monogamy, etc.”; by stigmatizing them, churches “reinforce their own power as in-group and create greater social cohesion amongst church members … [through] othering survivors,” thus reinforcing “patriarchal constructions of women, men and sex.” Importantly, women also join in: the female leader of the Rwandan Mother’s Union explained to Le Roux that they teach women “to be humble before their husbands, to obey them” (Le Roux 2014, 199). In other words, although these churches wield enormous formative power in their local communities and even nationally, and even though they have at times played important roles voicing social critique, they are largely either passive, or silent, when it comes to sexual violence. Le Roux’s own understanding of this situation includes the patriarchal nature of the sub-Saharan African cultures in which they are embedded, coupled with a kind of hyper-masculinity, “characterised by [sexually] violent and callous attitudes towards women” (Le Roux 2014, 201), driven by the militarization of masculinities during the recent and ongoing armed conflicts in these regions. Drawing on other studies, for example one done in Liberia, Le Roux views the high rates of sex crimes as indicative of “the persistence of hyper-masculinity within the country … eleven years after the war” (Jones et al. 2014, referenced in Le Roux 202). On top of the constant threat of sexual violation, women fear the stigma and discrimination which invariably follow on the violation. Survivors are labelled and stigmatized as ‘deviant’ and ‘other,’ which leads to further discrimination and even further sexual and other forms of violence visited upon them (Le Roux 2014, 202). Le Roux sees the churches as thereby replicating state and other CSO responses that seek to protect patriarchy, and she ascribes the stance to the patriarchal nature of the Christian churches themselves. She claims: “Truly engaging with sexual violence against women would mean that the patriarchal structure of society, culture and church will have to be dismantled, and this would mean a loss of power for [the] men [leading the churches]” (Le Roux 2014, 202). While I largely agree with Le Roux’s understanding, I wish in this article to extend the scope of analysis. In the first place, I would point to the racist-colonial assumptions that feed into an overly narrow and potentially spectacularizing focus on sexual violence on the African continent. Problematizing the sexuality of the African man as predatory (either essentially and biologically or in terms of his static and a-historical ‘patriarchal’ culture) and of the African woman as pure victim figures as a consistent trope in European empire building. As Elizabeth Philipose (2009, 198) cautions, feminist analyses must be vigilant not to sustain “assumptions about the racial and national hierarchies central to international legal systems and meanings.” From the perspective of colonial history, she argues, feminists should become more conscious of the extent to which “the contemporary practice of naming war crimes and spectacular violence is both a racialized and a racializing enterprise that reflects gendered and sexualized assumptions about the perverse sexuality of the Other.” In the second section, I follow Joseph Conrad in linking the ‘heart of darkness,’ sexual violence in the DRC, with the heart of darkness of and in London, one of the centres of the European empire. I do this by claiming that sexual violence against women in the DRC, figured in western media as one of the global depths of human depravity, cannot be de-linked from western economic interests in that region. For African Christian churches in the Congo to denounce and address the root causes of this form of violence, they have to not only stand up to their own cultures, societies and governments, but they must also stand up to the much more powerful neo-colonial interests and constitutive influences of western powers in the region. In line with the argument of Philipose, one may say that western powers economically active in the Congo have a lively interest in the portrayal of African men as sexually deviant, as well as in the social destabilization that accompanies large-scale sexual violence perpetrated against African women and girls. One may thus arguably speak of western and African patriarchies colluding. In this second section I therefore wish to thoroughly problematize the Enlightenment narrative that would have us believe that if only the light of western-style human rights could shine into the darkest heart of Africa, all will be well with her women. Thirdly and finally, I draw attention to the systemic failure of western secular liberalism to protect women against sexual violence. This time around, I locate another ‘heart of darkness’ in and of empire, and this time on the North American continent. My main claim in this section of the article is that the globally dominant institutions and cultural constructs facilitate the subjugation of women through ostensibly private but widespread sexual violence. Following thinkers like Heberle and Boulous Walker, I moreover diagnose the dominant institutions of our time – including the corporation, the state and the church – with a masculine psychosis which projects evil and instability onto the feminized other, while at the same time exempting itself of the possibility of evil-doing. This il-logic or rationale of a fragile and threatened victim-perpetrator also underlies the logic of human rights, the systematic othering of ‘evil’ violence and the justification of one’s own, ‘legitimate’ violence. In the same way, this dynamic of dominant modern masculine subject-formation underpins the intimate violence of the individual rapist or batterer, the anguished violence of the husband of the rape survivor, the victimization of rape victims by churches, and the structural violence of the neo-colonial corporation.

The movement of indigenous women in the Americas, through their organizations and political associations, has issued documents containing declarations, plans of action, demands, and proposals to rework the traditional concept of human rights. An analytical reading of some of these key texts has emerged from the main meetings during these last years. It is based both on their understanding of themselves as women in a context of gender relations and, at the same time, as belonging to a collectivity that encompasses communal values and practices. Within these notions of indigenous communities [pueblos originarios], women do not stand alone and neither do they perceive themselves as “individual subjects.” In the social space that they occupy, indigenous women are placed at the intersection of multiple identities: gender, race, ethnicity, and class. They contribute significantly to the reformulation of a new world that is more just, and that critically examines not only their role as poor, indigenous women, but also questions the role and power structures of the neoliberal state. They are gradually transforming the meanings of “human rights” within their own struggles as indigenous women. In the analysis that follows, I highlight the voices of organized indigenous women in the Americas by quoting extensively from key texts and interviews. There, it can be discovered how the internal logic of their speeches, while not always explicit, transforms the language of human rights and redefines it. In analyzing this redefinition, we find some main axes around which they formulate their struggle for social justice. Among them, we find a unique vision of the concept of gender; a defense of their indigenous spirituality; and a revision of responsibilities and rights within their communities. For the last twenty years, I have been participating in and closely linked to indigenous women’s social and political organizations. Always by their invitation, I have been a part of many meetings. This has been a privilege that allows me to do a “hermeneutics of orality” recording not only their words, but trying to uncover the philosophical context by which we can understand the deepest meanings and the ontological dimensions of their struggles for justice. The main countries in Latin America where these meetings have been held and from which its documents have emerged are Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela. National, regional, and continental reunions have taken place where indigenous women collaborate and make their statements from the Mesoamerican region in Central America as well as the Andean region in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. In the declaration, “Building our History,” from the National Meeting of Indigenous Women, Oaxaca, México, in 1997, the indigenous women state: Indigenous women form an important part in the development of our peoples and of the country; That the rights of women, and in particular, of indigenous women, are not recognized by the Constitution; That the right to parity and equity constitute part of the demands that we presented at the meeting on Indigenous Rights and Culture in San Andres, Chiapas; That we seek to change Article 27 of the Constitution to allow women the right to inherit land. (“Building our History” 1997: 29) The ideas and practices of gender relations in the different indigenous communities began to interact intensively with the proposals that emerged from the Zapatista revolutionary movement in 1994. For some indigenous people, belonging to independent organizations, Zapatismo opened the possibility of new expectations by broadening their perspectives and expressing their demands and aspirations in the language of rights. It was this language of rights that allowed them to communicate with other organized women, despite class and ethnic barriers. More recently, there is a broad movement of indigenous women of the Americas that is constantly growing, and that now transcends even national boundaries. This movement has been the organized by the women themselves, who have figured out ways to express their demands in the context of their own communities, seeking to challenge and transform those traditional practices that negatively affect them. They also affirm their wish that indigenous normative systems [usos y costumbres] be recognized, as well as the autonomous governance in their communities. In this regard, what needs to be respected is that it is the women of the indigenous communities themselves who make these decisions that are incumbent upon them in their own spaces. It is here that they manage to verbalize their most heartfelt demands regarding participation, equity, and a life free from violence. For these reasons, they consider it is important to discuss their traditions and customs, analyzing which of them they will determine to nurture and recover, and also which they will determine to discard. A human rights perspective features as central to this task, as is confirmed in the following statement. [T]he human rights framework expands social justice issues beyond the relatively narrow focus of civil rights, which seek only to punish the guilty. Human rights provide a broader perspective of social justice by combining civil and political rights with social, economic, and cultural rights. A human rights perspective on the problem of domestic violence, for example, considers the right to live free of violence together with the right to health, housing, education, and employment. In addition, the human rights perspective is built at the intersection of gender, race, language, religion, national origin, and a variety of additional factors. The human rights framework, in the opinion of the same author, is helpful because it provides: … a broad framework of social justice based on ideas of equity and dignity, and the aspiration to attain its universal application. In essence, this is a morally based claim on the idea that equity and dignity are international ideas, shared by others. The universality of this claim provides a very powerful moral attraction. The perspective from a social movement implies that civil and political rights are inseparable from the social, economic, and cultural. Importantly, the “universality” of this claim has been gradually channelled and re-created from below by women who come from different cultural contexts. These cultural contexts are often based on a “formation of a subject that is not necessarily aligned with the conception of the European Enlightenment’s notion of individual empowerment” (Mahmood 2005: x) Rather, this “re-semanticization” (Hernandez 2004: 3), expresses specific characteristics that are part of the Mesoamerican cultural universes. Foucault (1981) and Bakhtin (2011) have argued that every discursive act implies a dialogical process, i.e., an answer to the discursive act that preceded it. In this way, a discourse (in our specific case, of human rights) only exists in the context of prior discourses and is in dialogue with them. In this way, although discourse is influenced by prior discourses, there is simultaneously a re-formulated and new discourse that will serve as a base for those that will follow later. In relation to the discourse of rights, this implies that its origins as “Western,” or as a product of capitalist neoliberal philosophy does not determine its potentialities when discourse is adopted and used in a dia-logical way. Quite often, these new meanings, which arise from the practice of dialogue, question and critique the original discourse that preceded it.

By taking women’s ordination – a main gender issue debated in Buddhism – as an example, I reason why discrimination against women in religion not only violates women’s human rights but also basic Buddhist principles such as non-violence. I question whether from a Buddhist perspective religion and rights are two mutually exclusive terms, and then discuss two areas of tension: a tension between religious and secular law on the one hand and a tension between religious freedom and gender equality on the other. Based on this, I analyze how the dynamics of these areas of tension and gender issues could become a driving force for interreligious dialogue and for dialogue between religions and secular societies. In many world religions, women are discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens – Buddhism does not constitute an exception. This will be demonstrated in the context of the Buddha’s teaching, on the one hand, and of contemporary societies, on the other hand. A special focus lies on the compatibility of Buddhism with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution, the so-called Basic Law, of the Federal Republic of Germany. Human rights play an important role in this postmodern world. Therefore religions are called upon to take a stand on it. Although the term “human rights” is not part of the Buddhist vocabulary, the basic idea of human rights is not alien to Buddhism (Schmidt-Leukel 2010; Tsedroen 2010; Roloff 2015).

The amendments to the Indian Act over the past forty-four years have done very little to assist First Nations women and their children in their fight to reclaim their identity and their connections to their ancestry. The Act, originally enacted in 1876, has had a few amendments since that time. In 1982, the Constitution Act of Canada was legislated and with it came the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so the federal government was designated to remove any discrimination in all of its legislation. This included the Indian Act. The amendments following were in 1985, commonly referred to as Bill C-31 as well as C-3 in 2011 and S-3 in 2017. These amendments have resulted in many heated and disturbing conflicts amongst First Nations people, including First Nations women and their children who have been directly affected by the sexually discriminating sections of the Act. This chapter provides a historical overview of the Act, its origins and its inherent racist and sexist policies. As well it discusses those amendments affecting First Nations women and her descendants, specifically the registration and membership provisions that continue to discriminate against First Nations Women and her descendants who are both male and female.

In this article, I will examine some of the forces at play due to the introduction of a new sex education curriculum in the province of Ontario. The article examines the recent debate over sex education in Ontario through the lenses of women, rights and religion. It seeks to problematize all three lenses as well as to show how the three categories intersect. It also endeavours to expose some of the power dynamics in the debate. It suggests that we need to find better ways to interrogate religion in the public sphere than either simply accepting or condemning its presence.

Feminist critical approaches to religions have often been marked by a Western hegemony, discrediting traditionalists with sweeping claims of women’s oppression and suppression. But much is lost in this universalist and absolutist position. Current approaches embracing diversity and cultural particularities, open a door to considering auspicious heritage patterns. In this frame of references, rights may not be the language appropriate for a universal application or for a constructive critique.

The Virgin Mary looms large as the image of a “good” Filipina or Filipino woman in both cultural and religious landscapes in the Philippines. A “good Filipina” imagery points specifically to the weak or passive woman, who is represented by a satirical character named Maria Clara. The Roman Catholic Church reinforces such imagery to highlight the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. However, in the 21st century, Filipino women have come to challenge the image of a good woman as weak and passive person. This paper explores the challenges that Filipinas face in their everyday lives, which call for a re-examination of the role of Catholic faith in their lived experiences.

In the quest towards empowering women, different societies have introduced phenomenal reforms over the centuries but there still exist significant limitations in certain communities across the world. The Muslim world has been a focal point for most human rights activists. The general perception persists regarding equal access and opportunities for women in their pursuit of property rights. The frequently headlined point of ratio two to one in the Muslim inheritance share of men and women has been overstretched without any meaningful consideration to how women access other property rights through legitimate means provided under the Islamic law as well as other seemingly Sharī‘ah-compliant provisions in conventional human rights instruments. The modern dynamics underlying women’s property rights and the continued struggle towards securing such rights within complex societies that are tainted with pseudo-religious practices and mummified by deep-rooted cultural norms lead to two simultaneously deficient views with special reference to Muslim societies. While the first view believes women’s property rights are curtailed and excessively limited in Islam, the second position emphasizes the postmodernist approach, which tends to gravitate towards emancipating the modern day Muslim woman. Against the above backdrop, this chapter seeks to address four pertinent questions: 1. What are other property rights Muslim women can acquire apart from inheritance, which is often perceived in some quarters as being discriminatory? 2. What are the obstacles and limits constraining the full implementation of property rights for Muslim women? 3. Can the international human rights instruments help in providing equal access to, and protection of, property rights of both men and women, and to what extent is such a legal framework accepted in Muslim states? 4. How can a fresh and balanced appreciation of Islamic principles as lobbying tools for positive interpretation be constructed in the modern world? The legal status of women under the Sharī‘ah has been a subject many Muslim jurists of the past have laboured on in their respective juristic treatises. This same concept has touched off a maelstrom of controversy across the Muslim world and beyond, particularly when it comes to the strict interpretation of the inheritance rights in Islam. While one might not need to delve into the arena of controversy among some contemporary Muslim jurists, an endeavour to look inwards within the general Sharī‘ah framework reveals a plethora of neglected Islamic legal rules that may be closely studied to evolve a new integrated and holistic transformative property regime. This will re-emphasize the relevance of Islamic legal principles in the 21st century, which is expected to lead to some sort of convergence of laws in an increasingly globalized world. Therefore, it is high time people took a step further from the culturally denied gender land rights and the perceived gender discrimination in inheritance rights in Islam. This chapter focuses on some of these potential concepts within the Islamic framework that would promote unhindered access to property rights by way of recompense bearing in mind the increasing responsibilities shouldered by women in Muslim societies across the world.

Charity and justice are central concepts in most religious and ethical traditions. However, the precise meaning of each concept, and the nature of their interrelationship, has varied between cultures and through time. Contemporary liberal societies tend to associate “justice” with duty, with our collective moral obligation to ensure that all members of a society have a fair share of social goods (Kymlicka 2004). The discourse of “rights” has been prominent in this conception of justice. “Charity,” on the other hand, is associated with voluntariness, with individual choices to act generously that materially improve the situation of a stranger in need. Charity and justice are thus portrayed as dichotomous concepts within a liberal paradigm, with justice being ascribed significantly more normative weight (Kymlicka 2004). The normative universes of many religious traditions paint a more complex picture of the relationship between justice and charity. Islamic law, for example, counts zakat (obligatory alms-giving) among the five pillars of Islam, and instructs the Muslim in great detail about the circumstances in which zakat is payable, the rate at which zakat is payable, and the categories of needy persons who are entitled to receive it (de Zayas 2003). Judaism, for its part, situates the act of giving to the needy within a broader jurisprudence of mitzvot or obligations, and ranks different forms of almsgiving in accordance with a particular vision of economic justice. The narratives of charity and justice vary within as well as between religious traditions: indeed, the meaning and relative importance of charity and justice may be subject to contestation even within a particular faith community. This exploratory study examined how a group of evangelical Christian women are seeking to define and live out these concepts in the various contexts of their work with marginalized populations in British Columbia. The evangelical tradition in North America has tended to either adopt an individualistic notion of justice that is closer to liberal conceptions of charity, or to relegate justice to a sphere outside the church’s core concerns. Evangelical institutions have supported “charitable” projects that are aimed at alleviating the needs of individuals, but have not traditionally supported “justice” projects aimed at addressing systemic inequalities (Offutt et al. 2016). Previous research has shown that while mainstream evangelical churches are engaged in supporting certain political causes (e.g., opposing abortion and promoting socially conservative candidates), they have been reluctant to engage in social analysis or political activism aimed at fixing structural injustices (Conradson 2008; Delahanty 2016; Offutt et al. 2016; Thacker 2015). Delahanty (2016) argues that this tendency is the result of “a highly individualistic political theology” (p. 43) in which social issues and religious obligations are understood in individualistic terms. The “comfortable church culture” that is associated with this theological position both reinforces and is reinforced by the wider cultural context. Within this culture, “charity and volunteering [are considered to be] appropriate activities for church life… [but] collective analysis of systemic social problems [is] something to do elsewhere, if at all” (Delahanty 2016, p. 43). “Justice” efforts are considered to be, at best, outside of the purview of religion, and, at worst, a direct (possibly Communist) threat to Christianity (Delahanty 2016; Offutt et al. 2016). The evangelical church is not univocal, however, and there is an important counter-current within the evangelical community that considers advocacy efforts aimed at changing unjust systems and structures to be central to the Christian faith. In North America, this counter-current has been sustained most consistently by the Black evangelical church in the United States, which has long married a concern with social justice issues with more traditional evangelical concerns such as personal conversion, discipleship, and service provision (McNeil 2011; Berk 1989). This counter-current has also made small inroads into mainstream white evangelical churches and non-profit organizations in recent years. For example, Conradson (2008) describes how four mainstream faith-based organizations in New Zealand adopted a more explicit social justice orientation between 1996 and 2006. These four large organizations – Anglican Care, Methodist Mission, Presbyterian Support and the Salvation Army – transitioned from engaging primarily in social support and provision activities to engaging in social analysis and advocacy, in a very intentional way. This transition was, in part, a response to the increased social inequality the leaders of these organizations recognized as resulting from the neoliberal turn in politics during the 1990s in New Zealand. As Delahanty’s (2016) paper illustrates, there are also activist clergy and community organizers embedded within evangelical churches in the United States. Delahanty describes leaders in the American faith-based community organizing (FBCO) movement who endeavour to establish social justice activism as “an essential part of the mission to which God calls followers” (p. 49). These FBCO leaders have two aims: they aspire to achieve political and social change but also to achieve “a deeper cultural change in what church and religion mean to religious Americans” (p. 53, italics in original). One of the leaders sums up the challenge in this way: “We must no longer be chaplains to an empire. We must be the prophets of resistance” (pp. 53–54). Evangelicals who privilege justice efforts in their work are very clear that they are motivated by theological frameworks that understand correcting socioeconomic injustices to be a central tenet of the Christian faith. There are several of these justice-privileging frameworks, including liberation theology (e.g., see Thacker 2015), Anabaptist theology (e.g., see Finger 2004), kingdom theology (e.g., see Wright 2012) and the social gospel movement (e.g., see Deichmann 2015; Marsh 2008). Recently, there also have been efforts to develop a uniquely evangelical theology that places activism and advocacy at the centre of Christian life (e.g., see Offutt et al. 2016). For evangelicals who embrace these theologies, issues of social justice are primary, not tangential, issues for the church (Conradson 2008; Delahanty 2016). Nonetheless, leaders with a commitment to social justice and political advocacy still represent a minority or “counter-current” within the evangelical tradition. In British Columbia, these evangelical counter-currents are identifiable among female evangelicals who work with marginalized populations and are committed to addressing both the individual and systemic dimensions of the challenges faced by those populations. This study sought to explore these counter-currents, engaging with a group of female evangelicals who are actively pursuing “justice-oriented” models of non-profit service provision in spite of the dominant “charity-oriented” paradigm of evangelical charitable organizations. The researchers wanted to document the experiences and perspectives of these individuals – as service providers, as women, and as persons of faith – as they swim against a number of powerful institutional currents.

In this essay, I seek to bring a rights perspective to women’s religious leadership and agency in Africa, notably in the case of the newer forms of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity that now predominate in many parts of the continent. Rather than adopting a legal approach, I focus on the concept of “rights talk” (cf., Glendon 1991) which provides a more productive and inclusive way to approach ideas about women’s leadership in locally grounded (and often transnationally connected) African Christian communities. Such a line of inquiry shifts the emphasis from analyzing the impact of the newer generation churches (as the Pentecostal-charismatic churches are sometimes termed) on women’s rights—however narrowly or broadly conceived. It focuses on the women church founders and leaders who have publicly addressed the emancipation of women in the varying contexts of gender inequality. Sources for their discourses of freedom may be traditional, biblical, or theological, as well as government policy, and international human rights instruments. The discourses are increasingly tinged with neoliberal conceptions of individual freedom. I contend that the way modern Pentecostal-charismatic women leaders argue for equality, justice, and dignity in their religious communities can also be traced back to their forbears in the African-initiated or independent churches that date from the seventeenth century onwards. There are interesting parallels, as well as some differences, in the ways that they frame, explicitly or implicitly, their understandings of equality and freedom from oppression, and balance compliance and resistance to perduring patriarchal limitations on their religious agency.

The Tarbiyah (education) movement in Indonesia today is the best known and has the largest number of members amongst groups in the Dakwah (proselytising) movements that mostly work in Indonesian campuses. Using the notion of Islamic feminism, this study aims to explore the numerous varieties of women’s activities in this movement, especially in relation to the ways women see their rights and roles within their notion of piety. Female and male activists of the Tarbiyah movement in six state universities in East Java were interviewed to obtain data. Participant observations and in-depth interviews were used as approaches for data collection. This was undertaken from April 2015 to September 2016. One important finding indicates that the Tarbiyah members acknowledge that male and female are segregated in nature (biological construction). At the same time, however, they subscribe to concepts of women’s rights and equality while maintaining a form of sexual segregation.

This essay explores whether religious women’s reliance on choice to ground their rights claims may undermine the success of those claims. Canadian courts have interpreted religious freedom under section 2(a) of the Charter to include a strong element of choice. However, some religious choices have not received protection under section 2(a), nor under section 15’s guarantee of equality, particularly those choices that are seen to be the cause of the claimant’s harm or that cause harm to others. Our analysis centers on a case examining a Muslim woman’s freedom to wear a niqab during citizenship ceremonies, situating this case in the broader context of decisions involving women, religious freedom, equality, and choice. These cases confirm insights from the feminist literature about religious women and choice, including the relationship between choice, agency and autonomy; individualization; and the public/private dichotomy. We conclude that a de-emphasis on choice may be strategic for religious women’s rights claims.

It is often suggested that human rights and duties are two sides of the same coin. Yet in the Indian context, traditionally there is dharma discourse, which, with its rules of conduct, is obligation-based. As such, the issue of human rights has never been at the centre of discussion. Nor it has posed a ‘problem’ for the Indian masses. In modern India, human rights and women’s rights have been reconciled with, or made meaningful within Hinduism. At the same time, however, it is the caste system in India which necessarily generates tension and conflict, due to its complexity and multi-layered dimensions. Questions such as: ‘Who deserves what?’ and ‘Who decides this? are extremely important. I would argue that, in India today, the most difficult question to be addressed is: ‘How to include the excluded and how to exclude the included? At the core of the women’s rights debate there lies a need to interrogate the very being of an individual, person, self, or ‘other,’ in order to accommodate the claims and the counter-claims of rights. This is necessary in order to be creatively human, as the promise of humankind is often threatened by the destructive activities of the few who are in power, whether they be connected with political, social, economic, or religious matters. What is apparent in India today is more and more a division between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in the name of democracy and secularism. There is no automatic guarantee of success by the mere existence of democratic institutions. Democratic institutions, like those of all other institutions, depend on the interpretation and activities of human agents in utilizing opportunities for reasonable realization. Furthermore, Indian civilization, based on dharma, has often been claimed as creative and communicative. Dharma can be understood as recognizing human dignity and worth in terms of justice, unity, and benevolence, as a virtue of human fulfilment. It is accompanied by its theological insights and metaphysical doctrines. Dharma has both descriptive and prescriptive contents. It encompasses the way things are and the way things ought to be – involving the nature of human beings and their obligations or duties. The concern for gender justice and women’s rights, however, has also been an extremely important area in the Indian Constitution, right from the Independence Act of 1947. In examining the way that dharma is practiced in Indian society as part of gender justice, however, one finds a paradox in the urge to change and accept Western progressive and democratic values. This is because such a change also needs to be rooted in the past achievements of Indian society. This is highly problematic, particularly as the past has become interpreted by the contemporary Hindutva (Hindu right wing) advocates of social justice. This paradox, to a large extent, influences the way that women’s issues are being developed. There are two conflicting images of women in India, that of devī (goddess) or that of dāsi (servant). It is difficult for the middle class, educated, working women to be either one of these two roles. Each woman wants to be treated as a human being, as a dignified person who would have the power to decide what to be and to do. Yet to attain this, she would have constantly to face a struggle, which is often very difficult. In this paper, I will focus on the different layers of struggles that women in contemporary India have to face to negotiate both freedom and dignity. In this way, at the root of the feminist concern lies a critique of the traditions described above, and a search for ways that women can assert their own identity as human beings. One way, surely, would be the assertion of women’s rights. There may well be differences between Indian feminism and Western feminism, but the fundamental concern for both is a moral imperative to achieve well-being and dignity. Well-being, in this context, is to be understood as having real opportunities for individuals ‘to do and to be.’ The situation in a society becomes complicated when such opportunities are denied women by the patriarchal structure. Yet such discrimination is apparent in all religious traditions, such as Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, as well as in caste and tribe. In this paper, I will raise some fundamental questions regarding individual rights in relation to religion, such as: Does an individual have a right to interpret one’s own religion and tradition? Do individuals have the right to interpret other religious tradition(s)? If they do, to what extent, and who decides which interpretation is correct? These are the most important questions from a feminist perspective, specifically in the contemporary Indian context. Interpretation of religion, as living religion, is an essential part of everyday life of every woman and, for that matter, of every individual. In addition, tradition, culture, religion, and philosophy are inseparable in the everyday life of every individual in India (Mukherjee: 2015).

Despite its seemingly limiting force for women’s liberation, caring is a core value that defines various key relationships in human co-existence. On the other hand, detachment is an illustration of spiritual liberation in Buddhism. These two aspects of human experience seem to cancel each other out. This paper is an attempt to illustrate and investigate ‘caring detachment’ in Buddhism by exploring and analyzing the ways in which the Buddha deals with two cases of women who are in deep and extreme sorrow, namely the cases of Paṭācārā, the mad and naked woman who lost all her family members in one day of storm and torrential rain, and Kisā Gotamī the mother who cannot come to terms with the fact that her dear son had died. It will be argued that, for the Buddha, detachment does not cancel out caring. In these two cases, the Buddha shows great compassion in his positive engagement in the emotional turmoil of Paṭācārā and Kisā Gotamī, while simultaneously instructing them out of the entrapment of deep and extreme sorrow. Implications for the respect of human rights for women in Buddhism will be discussed.

Let me begin with some remarks that are both personal and professional: I am acutely aware that I am the only male scholar associated with this project. I wish the pioneering women of religious studies had been treated as well as I have been during our project. None of my colleagues in this work ever gave me the impression that my questions and comments were obtuse or without merit, even when indeed they were often the flat-footed questions of an amateur. I have been honoured by this kind of treatment and wish more men could have the experience of being outnumbered, decentred, and yet fully included. Writing the afterword for this volume might become an opportunity to indulge in academic “mansplaining,” as though I might provide a synoptic sense of intellectual closure. I am probably predisposed – by my culture, my privilege, my profession – to think this might be my appropriate role, but in my brief contribution to this volume, I have more modest ambitions. In the following reflections, I would like to identify and critically engage three of the common themes that appear in these chapters, or at least that occur to me in my reading.

The application of women’s rights to the religions of the world have prompted highly contentious debates. This volume explores the many intricate issues raised in such interactions. The chapters in this volume are authored by women scholars of religion from diverse regions of the world, representing a plurality of religions, including indigenous religions. To enrich this already complex undertaking, four philosophers and legal scholars have also contributed. Their chapters help to clarify present challenges and envision innovative possibilities. The volume identifies archaic attitudes involving exclusionary regulations and controversial gender-specific practices. More contemporary impasses, such as individualism, so prevalent in western rights debates, and the unitary model of human rights, where “one size fits all,” as promulgated in the west, are also appraised. Current constructive moves, especially expanding the notion of rights to involve relationships, are acknowledged. A primary concern of this volume is that of fostering future such collaborations of women advocates of gender justice.