Secularism and gender equality

Genderinequality is increasing. According to a new study by the WorldEconomic Forum, it will now take 100 years to close the global gendergap, up from its previous estimate of 83 years. It’s the first time theorganisation has recorded a worsening of women’s position in the world.Could the retreat of secularism be partly to blame?One long-heldassumption is that gender equality is an enduring principle ofsecularism, characterised by the separation of the political from thereligious and the public from the private.Countries with the highestlevel of gender equality are among the most secular places in theworld: Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand and Germany.Meanwhile, secularism is rejected by many of today’s traditionalist,conservative populist movements – in India, Turkey, Central Europe,Russia, the United States and elsewhere – where gender inequality isrife.Yet the famed gender historian Joan Wallach Scott, in her newbook, Sex and Secularism, claims the opposite is true. “The notion thatequality between the sexes is inherent to the logic of secularism”, sheargues, “is false”. “Gender inequality”, she states, “is not simply thebyproduct of the emergence of modern Western nations; rather, thatinequality is at its very heart”. Secularism, she adds, has served toaccount for this fact.More troubling, Scott affirms that secularismhas most often been used to justify the claims of white, Western andChristian racial and religious superiority in the present as well thepast. Strangely, the biggest threat to gender equality in the modernera, according to her argument, has been neither the Catholic church,Protestant fundamentalism, fascist movements, etc, but secularism.GraspingScott’s counterintuitive argument requires an understanding of herapproach to the history of secularism. The traditional view seessecularism as a long and gradual historical march to greater equalitybetween men and women that began with the French Revolution andcontinues on today. She doesn’t see it that way.Scott says she doesnot take issue with secularism as a legal and political reality, butrather with secularism’s champions who smugly claim that it isinherently good for women. Her book aims to dismantle such arguments byshowing just how sexist the history of the secular West has been. Byfocusing on debates about the self-congratulatory benefits of secularismScott offers a history of it that precludes any necessary relationshipto gender equality.Her approach leads to several excellentobservations about the origins of modern gender inequality. The book isat its strongest when showing how secularism in 19th-century Europe wasused as a weapon to oppose the threat of institutionalised Christianity,while also serving as a defence of imperial rule over the “uncivilised”peoples of Africa and Asia.The repudiation of religion during thistime, Scott argues, was predicated on idealised distinctions betweenwhat belongs in the public sphere (men, markets, politics, andbureaucracy) and the private sphere (women, family and religion).“Thesedistinctions had nothing in them of gender equality,” Scott rightlyobserves; “rather, they were marked by a presumption of genderinequality.” They were, in fact, used as justifications for not givingwomen the right to vote, which in secular France – out of fear womenwould vote for the church party – did not happen until 1944.But thelessons to be drawn from this are not spelled out. She asserts inpassing throughout the book that there are forms of genuine equalityoutside the confines of secularism, presumably in religious traditions,but she remains mute on whether she endorses them.More importantly,Scott does not explain why today, self-identified religious communitiesare more supportive of legal inequality than secular ones. We know alltoo well that there is sexism in the West, but by not discussing whatthe anti-secularists say about women, she makes the secularists out tobe the villains of the story.This oversight is largely due to aninconsistency in Scott’s approach. Sex and Secularism claims to solelybe concerned with critiquing discourse around secularism, not thepolitical and legal reality of secularism. However, she doesn’t respectthat boundary when she repeatedly argues that real existing secularismhas been bad for women without contending with proof to the contrary.Thefact is that plenty of feminists throughout the 19th century and 20thcentury linked their emancipation with secularisation – or at leastemancipation from traditionalist churches. Scott puts this historyaside, by provocatively claiming that it was not really until the late20th century that gender equality became a primary concern forsecularists, and this ultimately had to do with secularism’s new enemy:political Islam.Perhaps it is because Scott is a historian ofFrance, where she believes oppression of Muslim women in the name ofsecular values is Islamophobic to the core. But whatever the reason,Scott believes that the secular West as a whole is in a clash with Islamdue to its inability to imagine gender equality and religious freedomoutside the confines of secularism.Scott is interested in knowing:what kind of gender equality we have currently arrived at in the secularWest? A rather dismal one, she believes, in which such equality isinseparable from a conception of sexual emancipation in service ofglobal capitalism: one which rejects Muslims from being part of theWestern community if they do not buy into our neoliberal ways of life;one that foresees an inevitable clash of civilizations between the Westand Islam.Sex and Secularism must be praised for drawing attentionto the history of secularism and gender inequality. Scott’s message isno doubt timely in light of the powerful effect of the #MeToo campaign,which should given anyone pause before boasting about the superiortreatment of women in the secular West.But unless an alternativearrangement proves more beneficial to closing the gender gap, the bestbet is to reform secularism, both in terms of public discourse and legalinitiatives – like those that marginalise women in France – so as toremedy the sexism and abuses of power Scott has so brilliantly pointedout. - Guardian News & Media