Why We Should Join Forces for Women’s Rights and Religious Liberty – five part series

by Susan Yoshihara

In this first of a series of five blogs on gender and religious freedom, I want to introduce you to our newly entitled blog, Fortis! It means, “be valiant, steadfast, brave!” and these are qualities we seek to embody and promote here at American Council on Women, Peace, and Security. Our commitment to religious liberty runs deep.

Freedom of religion is a foundational American Constitutional liberty, longstanding value in US foreign policy, and fundamental right. So, it’s fundamental to women’s rights and equality, to peaceful societies, and in that way, to national security.

This blog series addresses a problem. That is, religious freedom is missing in analysis, advocacy, and policy for women’s rights and vice versa. This series will look at:

• Why the false choice between promoting women’s rights and religious liberty?

• How can we integrate religious freedom into gender analysis and vice versa?

• How does protecting women’s religious freedom promote stable, resilient, and peaceful societies?

• What is the double persecution of women of faith?

• What can we do about all this in law, policy, and advocacy?

Part I: A false choice between advancing women’s rights and freedom of religion

Finding ways to reinforce peace and prevent violence is one of four pillars of the Women Peace and Security identified by the UN Security Council and codified in the US Women Peace and Security Act of 2017. Yet the power of religious practice and affiliation often goes missing in efforts to analyze barriers to women’s participation in peacebuilding and implement the WPS program in US agencies. One reason is the perceived or actual tension between women’s rights and freedom of belief (FORB) at the international level where it has become conventional wisdom. The US Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) examined the way UN agencies pit religious liberty and women’s rights against each other and urges UN staff to see the synergy between the two mandates.

Yet the main reason for the false choice is that governments persist in invoking freedom of religious belief and culture to perpetuate harmful practices against women and girls including: pre-natal sex selection and abortion, infanticide, neglect (“exposure”), sexual violence, polygamy, so called honor killings, dowry violence, forced child marriage, female genital mutilation, trafficking and slavery, and discrimination against women in cases of custody and care of children, divorce and remarriage, confinement, dress codes, education, access to justice and more.

This has led theorists to conclude that traditional religion perpetuates a patriarchy and is therefore fundamentally at odds with women’s rights. See this feminist discussion positing ways that “securitization” and “fundamentalist” pursuits of authority interact to the detriment of women’s freedom.

Importantly, faith-based organizations are working to end the violations of universally agreed rights USCIRF enumerated. Equally important is the distinction between universally agreed rights and assertions of rights. Interest groups have used the UN human rights system, for example, to advance a particular cause which is not part of the text, intent, or meaning of a treaty. To help distinguish these, USCIRF has outlined legitimate and illegitimate reasons for religious exceptions to universally agreed human rights.

Perhaps the most important evidence of a false choice is that women rely on their religious faith to survive violence, return to the community, and become agents of positive social change and peace. When I was working at Mother Teresa’s home for the dying in Kolkata, I encountered among the other volunteers veteran health care professionals who languished at the harsh conditions while the sisters—working in the slums year in and year out—carried on with what can only be called joy. When asked they attributed this to their faith. I will look at this phenomenon in a coming blog.

Thus, preserving religious freedom in places where such minority religions are persecuted is not just a theoretical or legal tension, it is a problem for peacebuilding practitioners. Many women working for peace in secular organizations say they are motivated by their religious beliefs. These women also say they find themselves sidelined. And secular organizations can be uncomfortable working with religious groups. Meanwhile, religious institutions still can dissuade or even disallow women from leadership positions on grounds other than religious doctrine. Going forward, and on a practical level, religious and secular organizations should better include women in larger peacebuilding campaigns and make those campaigns more effective in ending conflict.

Conversely, the violators of women’s rights see no false choice and pursue a double persecution (the subject of a coming blog post in this series), extinguishing religious opposition by targeting women for violence. Both have generational effects. But these dynamics often go missing from analysis and so policy makers, military planners, and aid organizations often miss the larger forces at work in societies.

In my next blog I will look at how some analysts are fixing the blind spot by integrating gender data into religious persecution analysis.