Man's Dominion: The Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Women's Rights

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Routledge, Jun 17, 2013 - Political Science - 232 pages

In this feminist critique of the politics of religion, Sheila Jeffreys argues that the renewed rise of religion is harmful to women’s human rights. The book seeks to rekindle the criticism of religion as the founding ideology of patriarchy.

Focusing on the three monotheistic religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this book examines common anti-women attitudes such as ‘male-headship’, impurity of women, the need to control women’s bodies, and their modern manifestations in multicultural Western states. It points to the incorporation of religious law into legal systems, faith schools, and campaigns led by Christian and Islamic organisations against women’s rights at the U.N., and explains how religious rights threaten to subvert women’s rights. Including highly-topical chapters on the burka and the covering of women, and polygamy, this text questions the ideology of multiculturalism which shields religion from criticism by demanding respect for culture and faith, whilst ignoring the harm that women suffer from religion.

Man’s Dominion is an incisive and polemic text that will be of interest to students of gender studies, religion, and politics.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
religion and the subordination of women
16
the divine right of patriarchs
32
3 The right to religion trumps womens human rights
57
4 Multiculturalism and respect for religion
77
5 Desecularisation and womens equality
101
6 Covering up women
119
7 A harem for every man? The rise of polygamy
145
Islamic feminism and its critics
168
liberating women from religious oppression
189
References
197
Index
218
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About the author (2013)

Sheila Jeffreys is a Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Industrial Vagina (2009) and Beauty and Misogyny (2005).