Women's Rights, Religion, and the Family

The principle of equality between men and women is firmly embedded in the international human rights regime. Over the past six decades the United Nations and its member states have endorsed a series of declarations and conventions endorsing equal rights for women in politics, the economy, and society. The world’s leading religious communities, too, have increasingly embraced the principle of human rights in general and equal rights for women in particular. The near universal consensus on principle is striking, as is wide recognition that progress towards equal rights for women – though still uneven – transforms countries for the better.

When one moves from human rights in the polity and society to the level of the family, a more complex picture emerges. Women’s equality, increasingly realized in civic life, remains highly contested within the institution of marriage. And gender equality in society, while still unattained, is more advanced than equal treatment of boys and girls within families. Across a range of issues – including educational access, reproductive health, domestic violence, and early marriage – rights for women and girls have not only not been secured. They are often not even acknowledged as an imperative and frequently receive low priority among competing claims. The norm of patriarchy is still the rule in much of the world.

The role of religion at the intersection of women’s rights and the family is both highly controversial and poorly understood. For secular critics, faith traditions are at the foundation of patriarchal norms that underwrite the subordination of women. Many religious conservatives counter that civic equality for women is compatible with traditional family structures. Religious progressives stake out a third position, supporting full gender equality within the family as well as society as an expression of the equal dignity of sons and daughters of God. As controversy within and across these groups and perspectives has grown more visible and polarized, our knowledge of how women’s rights, religion, and the family interact in practice has lagged behind. On some sensitive issues, like family planning, each party invokes its own definitions, sources, and statistics. In areas where there is greater consensus, such as domestic violence and child marriage, reliable evidence of what is actually happening and why remains scarce.

The Women’s Rights, Religion, and the Family project is organized around three questions, four issues, and three world regions.

Questions
>>How do the world’s religious traditions shape ideas about the family, its gender roles, and the meaning and value of equality?
>>How are religious communities both impeding and advancing efforts to realize greater rights for women and girls in the family context?
>>What are promising areas for engagement and collaboration across the religious-secular divide in support of women in the family around the world?

Issues
The project will track these questions through a focus on four critical issues – educational access, reproductive health, domestic violence, and early marriage.
>>The right to education is today an international norm as is the goal of “education for all.” Enormous progress has been achieved in overcoming large barriers to education of girls but there are important gaps and exceptions, both in term of access and achievement.
>>Healthcare, too, is fundamental to human development. Yet access to appropriate health care, especially reproductive health, for women lags. For example, efforts to address maternal mortality lag furthest behind among the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
>>Domestic violence represents a direct attack on the health, dignity, and human rights of women. It also burdens emergency care, law enforcement, and social support services, and furthers absenteeism and lost economic productivity.
>>Girls who marry before they have completed their schooling and have reached full maturity face lifelong disadvantages. They and their children are far more likely to die or suffer disabilities. Early marriage is increasingly recognized as an international human rights issue.

While the project will focus on these four topic areas, it will also address cross-cutting issues relating to expectations of women as wives, mothers, and daughters and the corresponding expectations for husbands, fathers, and sons.

Regions
The intersection of religious traditions and communities with these four issues will be explored focusing on three world regions – Latin America, Africa (including North Africa), and Asia. Within each region, the project will focus on two key countries in particular.

WORK PROGRAM
Over three years (Fall 2012-Spring 2015) the project will move through four phases:

Preliminary research: This phase will gather existing research, investigate teachings on gender roles and family in leading religious traditions, and identify leading groups and individuals representing different points of view. A number of policy and thought leaders on each of the four specific issues will be identified and interviewed. An interview series on Women’s Rights, Religion, and the Family, based on these interviews, will help to inform the ensuing research by region and country.

Regional reports/Consultations: The project will generate three regional reports, each of which will contain two country case studies. These will involve literature and desk research and interviews with leading practitioners and religious leaders in the region, before moving to the field where long-form, semi-structured interviews will ground the country case studies in local realities. The findings of each regional report, once finalized, will be presented and discussed in a consultation/conference, to take place in the region, with regional experts and other relevant parties (locations to be determined). Three meeting reports, documenting those deliberations, will also be produced.

Policy briefs and workshops: Upon completion of the three regional reports, the team will summarize its findings by region and by issue and produce a series of draft policy briefs -- 3 regional and 5 issue-based – to be presented for discussion at workshops with multiple stakeholders in government, international organizations, NGOs, and faith communities.

Capstone conference: The policy briefs, revised in light of the workshops, in addition to the interview series and three regional reports, will inform a capstone conference to be held over two days at the end of the project. Day 1 will be a closed door session with a select group of invitees, to discuss the policy implications of the project findings for multiple stakeholders. The session will be closed to external audiences to promote frank discussion among participants and honest responses to the data collected and analyzed. Day 2 of the conference will be open to the public to present the entirety of the findings, which may be divided by issue or region, as appropriate.

A final report will compile any additional insights obtained during the capstone and outline the main findings across the regions and issues based on the evidence gathered.

Reports: 3 regional reports including 6 country case studies, 1 interview publication and summary report, 8 policy briefs and one final summary of findings and recommendations.

Online resources: A mapping of key organizations, programs, publications, and events at the intersection of women’s rights, religion, and the family, will serve as a resource for scholars, practitioners, educators, and the general public.