UNRISD, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
Third World Q. 2010;31(6):833-50. doi: 10.1080/01436597.2010.502700.
This article explores how religion as a political force shapes and deflects the struggle for gender equality in contexts marked by different histories of nation building and challenges of ethnic diversity, different state-society relations (from the more authoritarian to the more democratic), and different relations between state power and religion (especially in the domain of marriage, family and personal laws). It shows how 'private' issues, related to the family, sexuality and reproduction, have become sites of intense public contestation between conservative religious actors wishing to regulate them based on some transcendent moral principle, and feminist and other human rights advocates basing their claims on pluralist and time- and context-specific solutions. Not only are claims of 'divine truth' justifying discriminatory practices against women hard to challenge, but the struggle for gender equality is further complicated by the manner in which it is closely tied up with, and inseparable from, struggles for social and economic justice, ethnic/racial recognition, and national self-determination vis--vis imperial/global domination.
本文探讨了宗教作为一种政治力量，如何在不同的国家建设历史和民族多样性挑战、不同的国家-社会关系（从更威权到更民主）以及国家权力与宗教之间的不同关系（特别是在婚姻、家庭和个人法律领域）的背景下，塑造和改变争取性别平等的斗争。它展示了“私人”问题，如与家庭、性和生殖有关的问题，如何成为保守宗教行为者根据某些超验道德原则对其进行监管的激烈公共争议的场所，以及女权主义者和其他人权倡导者基于多元主义和特定于时间和背景的解决方案提出的主张。不仅以“神圣真理”为借口证明歧视妇女的做法是难以挑战的，而且争取性别平等的斗争还因以下方式而变得更加复杂：它与争取社会和经济正义、族裔/种族认同以及国家自决的斗争密切相关，而这些斗争又与帝国/全球统治相对立。
