Why We Should Join Forces for Women’s Rights and Religious Liberty – part 2/5

Part II: Integrating Religious Freedom and Gender Analysis

by Susan Yoshihara

In my last blog, I looked at the false choice between promoting women’s rights and protecting religious freedom—in advocacy, scholarship, and practice. This has led to an analytical blind spot whereby scholars and practitioners in both fields miss important facts and trends that otherwise can help both their efforts. 

One welcome exception is the iterative report Gender and Religious Persecution from the Christian religious freedom organization Open Doors. The 2023 publication and the 2024 iteration are worth the read. The analysis is valuable for those seeking to refine the use of gender analysis (the systemic analytical process used to identify, understand, and describe differences between women and men and the significance of gender in a specific context). It will also be of great use to those who seek to understand how men and women experience religious persecution in different ways, and why perpetrators target them differently. 

One of the Open Doors reports’ findings is the generational effects when gender and religious persecution are compounded. No doubt this is the reason it is employed. As my last blog noted, sexual violence and rape as a weapon of war devastates societies for generations. Combining the two has political military ends, ensuring that political ends are achieved regardless of military success or defeat. 

The Open Doors report also shows the limitations of law and policy on women’s rights and WPS. Nations don’t walk the talk, and some of the world’s worst places to be a woman of faith are in countries that have ratified the Convention Against the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) for example. Hatred for religion trumps risk of approbation for violating otherwise universally supported goals of ending trafficking, sexual slavery, and other widely condemned crimes. 

Source: Open Doors, 2023 Gender and Religious Persecution

This dynamic is seen when comparing gender analyses conducted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) alongside a list of those nations which have published National Action Plans on Women Peace and Security (WPS). In the PRIO report, the darker shaded countries have lower numbers on a scale of women’s protection. Some of the same nations that score the lowest on women’s rights are also those officially implementing WPS: Iraq, CAR, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Republic of Congo, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Mexico.  

Source: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 

Source: PRIO/Georgetown Institute of WPS Index 

Understandably, Ukraine makes the list because, as PRIO found, women’s insecurity correlates to their proximity to violence and the scale of that violence. War breaks down norms of protection and respect for the dignity of others, exposing the most vulnerable to increased violence and less protection from families and communities in crisis. In other words, prevention of conflict is essential to the other components of WPS, their participation in the peace, and certainly their protection from harm. Religious institutions are often at the forefront of protest against war and calling for ceasefires and war termination—evidence that religious freedom and women’s protection are related in practice. 

Therefore, better data and analysis on this interrelationship is more sorely needed in the future. The the content of these action plans that matter, as well as political will to implement them. This is one reason why the 2023 US Strategy and National Action Plan on WPS, which left out  prevention of violence, was such a missed opportunity. The forthcoming US implementation plans from State, DOD, USAID, and DHS are now less likely to include actionable prevention measures, but it is not too late for these agencies to make up for this omission. 

In my next post I will examine the way that protecting women’s religious freedom enhances stability, resilience, and peace.