Introduction

In July 1848, approximately 250 women and 40 men gathered in the town of Seneca Falls, New York State, for a convention whose aim was to discuss the 'social, civil and religious condition and rights of women' at the time. After two days of deliberations, it issued a signed statement known as the Declaration of Sentiments. The preface reiterated and refined the famous opening line of the United States Declaration of Independence, avowing that the equality of men and women is held to be a self-evident truth.1 The document then proceeded to list 16 specific 'sentiments', or areas of concern, where such equality was far from self-evident. These comprised a raft of denied women's rights including suffrage, political office, ownership of property, equal pay, a just divorce process, custody of children, higher education and access to a professional career. There were also a number of items on the list that targeted gender inequality within the Christian religion itself:

• In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to administer chastisement.
• As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
• He allows her in church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
• He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.

The Seneca Falls convention is widely considered to be one of the watershed moments in the history of Western secular feminism, but it often surprises people to discover that it was actually held in the local Wesleyan Chapel, that many of its participants were practising Christians, and a good proportion of its key concerns were related to religious forms of sexism.

Two years earlier, across the Atlantic Ocean, a group of progressive-minded rabbis had gathered in Breslau, Germany (now Poland), as part of a series of conferences that eventually led to the establishment of the Reform branch of Judaism. Among the issues being considered was the position of women in religious life. The conference commission, appointed to re-evaluate women's traditional roles in the light of modernity, recommended that Jewish women be granted the same religious rights and duties as men. Although no formal vote was taken, the participants agreed that it was nothing less than their sacred duty as Reform rabbis 'to declare with all emphasis men's and women's complete religious equality'.2 A few years later, on the other side of the world, the Bengali scholar and social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was challenging certain Hindu practices that discriminated against women, especially the prevalence of child brides and the traditional ban on widows (but not widowers) remarrying - a combination that condemned vast numbers of young girls to a life of ostracization and misery. Vidyasagar's stance was inspired not only by the Enlightenment ideal of gender equality, championed at Seneca Falls and Breslau, but also by the theological conviction that such practices were neither consistent with nor sanctioned by the earliest Hindu scriptures.

These three cases are not the first historical instances of persons expressing concern over the rights of women in a religious context. Earlier examples include Margaret Fell in 17th-century Christianity and Andal in 8th-century Hinduism. However, in the wake of the European Enlightenment, the mid-19th century witnessed the rapid rise of organized, international feminism and religious forms of sexual discrimination were not exempt from its penetrating gaze.3 The inevitable encounter between traditional religion and modern feminist criticism predictably resulted in a considerable degree of mutual hostility, which still persists today. For many, the two are fundamentally incompatible, and this plays out in both directions. The various waves of modern feminism have led large numbers of women and men to abandon institutional religion altogether as hopelessly sexist. Conversely, a significant proportion of believers have rejected the feminist project as inherently inimical to their faith. For both groups, never the twain shall meet. However, there is a position between these two extremes that sees the encounter between feminism and religion as an enriching, liberating merger rather than a catastrophic collision. Many committed religious adherents have embraced the central feminist principle of gender equality and applied it critically and constructively to their faith, resulting in the emergence of an entirely new field of academic endeavour: feminist theology. They are simultaneously feminists and believers, committed to repairing their religion from within. We will look more closely at the relationship between feminism and religion in Chapter 2, but it should be stated at the outset that the primary interest of this book is this middle approach, namely the form of religious feminism that recognises the presence of sexist features within the sacred tradition but that also commits itself to the reform of that same tradition based on the non-negotiable principle of gender equality. This is not meant to imply that the more critical form - namely, total rejection of institutional religion as irredeemably sexist - is invalid or unworthy of attention. It simply means that the focus of this book is reform, not revolutionary, religious feminism.

The seeds of reform religious feminism can be seen in those three 19th-century examples mentioned above, but the full flourishing of a systematic feminist scrutiny of the world's major faiths occurred in the late 20th century, starting with the three Abrahamic religions but quickly expanding into the Hindu-Buddhist world. Among the myriad of authors, certain pioneering names could be noted here: Judith Plaskow, Rachel Adler, Rachel Biale and Judith Hauptmann in Judaism; Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Phyllis Trible in Christianity; Fatima Mernissi, Riffat Hassan, Leila Ahmed and Amina Wadud in Islam; Rita Gross, Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, Karma Lekshe Tsomo and Sandy Boucher in Buddhism; and Kamla Bhasin, Madhu Kishwar, Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young in Hinduism. Some of these authors have not been comfortable with the word 'feminist', especially those writing in non-Western contexts where the term is frequently associated with European colonisation and does not sit easily with longstanding cultural values such as duty, obedience and humility.4 However, they all agree that their religion has been tainted by deep-seated prejudice against women and that this needs to be addressed for the sake of justice and equality.

As we now move further into the third decade of the 21st century, the work of reform religious feminism is far from over. The ancient traditions being scrutinised for sexist contamination have proved to be deeply entrenched and virtually immovable in some cases. The conservative defence of these sacred, yet biased, beliefs and practices is determined and impassioned, reinforced by recent upswings of religious fundamentalism, political nationalism and social conservatism, not only in the post-colonial, developing world but also in the bastion of liberty itself, Western Europe and North America. The feminist re-interpretation of texts, reformulation of beliefs and revision of practices has undeniably made headway in some branches of certain religions, but there is clearly still a long way to go.

This leads to another important clarification about the scope of this book. Many reform religious feminists argue that the most productive way forward is to focus on the actual, lived experience of women within their faith systems. In reality, women often occupy their own 'world' within the patriarchal structures, creating new forms of religious activity, innovative rituals and unofficial forms of leadership. They have found ways to live their faith independent of the male-authored scriptures, theological pronouncements and religious laws that have borne down so heavily upon them. Once again, this is a valid dimension of the reform feminist project, and there are many works that explore these worlds within worlds, providing enriching insights into how women live out their faith despite the sexism around them.5 However, this is not the primary focus here. Without denying the importance of those unofficial worlds, this book turns its attention firmly and squarely on those formal teachings and practical rules that exhibit serious gender bias. Indeed, the two approaches are not antithetical. Critiquing sexism in the official tradition at an intellectual level should not undermine or invalidate the exploration of women's religious lives at the experiential level; or vice-versa.

So, what exactly is the scope of this book? Its main aim is to provide a comparative, thematic study of the forms and extent of gender inequality in five major religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. More specifically, it has a threefold purpose:

1. To identify gender-biased teachings and practices in each religion and organise them into principal themes.
2. To examine the relevant texts, exegetical...