Christianity and Islam Oppress Women
For most of human history, the subordination of women did not require a police force, a legal code or a standing army to enforce it. It required only a pulpit. Patriarchy is an ancient and nearly universal social arrangement, but religion, particularly Christianity, which has dominated Western civilization for two millennia, did something that brute force or custom could never achieve on its own: it transformed a human social hierarchy into a cosmic law.
To understand the durability of misogyny across the globe, one must first recognize the unique mechanism of religious authority. Social customs are inherently fluid. As human morality evolves, they can be debated, eroded and eventually discarded. But when a rule is attributed not to human preference, but to the divine will, it becomes immune to the normal mechanisms of social change. To challenge a cultural norm is to be a reformer. To challenge a divine mandate is to be a heretic. This is the central sleight-of-hand by which religious institutions have entrenched the subjugation of women. By absorbing ancient patriarchal customs and sanctifying them, religion placed the oppression of women beyond ordinary contestation
This pattern is not unique to any single faith. It’s a structural feature of organized religion as a whole. Classical Islamic jurisprudence institutionalized the financial and legal subordination of women by mandating that daughters inherit only half of what sons receive, and historically weighting a woman’s testimony in court as equal to only half a man’s. The Hindu Manusmriti dictates that a woman must be subject to her father in youth, her husband in adulthood and her sons in old age, explicitly denying her independent existence at every stage of life. Orthodox Jewish tradition has historically barred women from full participation in religious courts and the advanced study of foundational texts. Across continents and centuries, the algorithm is identical: human inequality is recast as holy doctrine
Yet, given its immense historical reach, Christianity provides the clearest and most devastating example of this dynamic. Unlike other social institutions that eventually bend to progress, Christianity’s foundational texts do not merely reflect the patriarchal culture of the ancient Near East. They narrate female subordination as a metaphysical fact woven into the very fabric of creation
The opening chapters of Genesis establish a theological hierarchy that has poisoned Western attitudes toward women for two thousand years. The woman is not created concurrently with the man, but subsequently, and explicitly from his body, designated as a mere “helper” for him. She is named by him, establishing a paradigm of male authority. Most disastrously, the narrative of humanity’s first disobedience centers entirely on Eve’s deception, forging an indelible, foundational link between femininity, moral weakness and the corruption of the world. The subsequent decree that a husband shall “rule over” his wife is not framed as a tragic consequence of the fall to be overcome, but as a divine punishment embedded at the absolute foundation of human history
The New Testament builds an institutional church upon this fractured bedrock. The epistles explicitly instruct wives to submit to their husbands as they would to Christ himself. Women are forbidden from teaching or holding authority over men, commanded, instead, to learn in silence and submissiveness, with the text explicitly citing Eve’s deception as the theological justification for this permanent embargo. In other passages, women are flatly commanded to remain silent in church gatherings. For two millennia, these were not dismissed as culturally relative artifacts. They were preached as the literal word of God, forming the bedrock of Christian moral instruction
The Bible alone, however, did not build the apparatus of female oppression. Interpretation did. The earliest and most influential theologians took the disparate texts of the Bible and systematized them into an overwhelming architecture of misogyny. Tertullian, one of the most pivotal figures in Latin Christianity, famously addressed women as the “Devil’s gateway”, burdening every female with individual, hereditary guilt for the fall of Humanity. Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas synthesized Christian theology with Aristotelian biology to formally declare women “misbegotten males”, intellectually and morally defective by nature. During the Reformation, Martin Luther (despite challenging papal authority) anchored women’s worth entirely to domesticity and childbearing, actively discouraging female education and civic participation. These were not fringe heretics. They were the foundational architects of Christian orthodoxy
This theological hatred inevitably bled into physical violence. The witch persecutions that ravaged Europe and colonial America between the 15th and 18th centuries were not merely a panic, but an ecclesiastical inquisition dressed in theological certainty. Driven by texts like the Malleus Maleficarum (a manual written by Dominican inquisitors which explicitly taught that women were inherently more susceptible to demonic seduction), the Church provided the ideological framework for a campaign of terror. Historians estimate that up to 80% of the tens of thousands of people executed for witchcraft were women. They were disproportionately widows, midwives, healers and marginal women who existed outside the direct control of a husband. The witch hunts functioned as a systemic purge of female independence, sanctioned from the pulpit. Martin Luther himself preached sermons encouraging Christians to burn witches
Nor did this religious oppression remain confined within church walls. It drafted the secular laws that governed the modern world. The English and American legal doctrine of coverture, which entirely erased a married woman’s legal identity, subsuming her property, contracts and bodily autonomy under her husband, was a direct secular translation of Christian theology. In the Christian paradigm, the husband was the head of the wife just as Christ was the head of the Church. For centuries, the church stood as an immovable roadblock against women’s legal personhood.
When the secular world finally began to push for women’s rights, organized Christianity was not the vanguard of liberation, but the primary bulwark of resistance. Church leaders mobilized biblical authority to fight against women’s suffrage, arguing that political participation violated women’s “God-given” domestic sphere. They fiercely opposed women’s access to higher education, claiming female intellect was inherently inferior and that studying would divert women from their divine duty to bear children. In every modern era, from the liberalization of divorce laws to the fight for reproductive autonomy, organized religious institutions have framed their opposition not as a political disagreement, but as the defense of the divine order
Crucially, this is not merely a dark chapter in a closed book. The misogyny of Christianity is a living, breathing institution in the modern world. The Catholic Church, representing over a billion people, continues to enforce an absolute ban on women entering the priesthood, citing the maleness of Jesus’ apostles as unalterable divine law. Eastern Orthodoxy maintains the exact same barrier. Across vast swaths of global Evangelical Protestantism, “complementarian” theology is aggressively promoted, explicitly teaching that men hold permanent headship over women, in both the family and the church. Female submission is not framed as a regrettable cultural leftover, but as the glorious, eternal design of God
Apologists frequently attempt to distance modern faith from these realities, arguing that oppressive passages are taken out of context or that individual believers are kind. But the historical and institutional facts are inescapable. Religion did not invent the desire to control women, but it gave that desire its most powerful weapon: the cloak of divine eternity. By transforming the subordination of women from a changeable social arrangement into the unalterable will of the Creator, Christianity and other world religions constructed a nearly indestructible engine of misogyny. To truly dismantle the oppression of women, we must finally stop treating religion as a bystander to patriarchy and recognize it for what it has historically been: patriarchy’s most dedicated guardian.
The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days […]. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding […]. If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean […]. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.’”
Summary
- The Divine Mechanism of Oppression: Religion transformed the subordination of women from a changeable social custom into an unalterable “cosmic law”, making challenging misogyny an act of heresy, rather than mere social reform.
- A Universal Religious Pattern: This is a structural feature of all organized religion, seen in Islamic inheritance laws, the Hindu Manusmriti’s mandate of lifelong male guardianship and Orthodox Judaism’s restriction of women from religious texts and courts.
- Christianity as the Clearest Example: Christian texts do not just reflect ancient patriarchal culture. They frame female inferiority as a metaphysical fact of creation.
- Foundational Texts: Genesis establishes women as secondary “helpers” created from men and permanently links femininity to moral weakness and the corruption of the world through the story of Eve. The New Testament explicitly commands female silence, submission and bans on teaching men.
- Systematized by Theologians: Early church architects weaponized these texts, with Tertullian labeling women the “Devil’s gateway”, Thomas Aquinas declaring them “misbegotten males” and Martin Luther restricting women strictly to domesticity.
- Violence and Secular Law: This theology fueled the witch hunts (which targeted mostly independent women) and directly shaped secular laws like coverture, which legally erased a married woman’s identity and subsumed it under her husband.
- Bulwark Against Progress: Throughout modern history, organized Christianity has led the resistance against women’s suffrage, higher education, divorce reform and reproductive rights, framing this opposition as defending “God’s order”.
- A Living Institution: This misogyny is not just historical. It continues today through the Catholic and Orthodox ban on female priests and the Evangelical promotion of “complementarianism” (the belief in eternal male headship and female submission).
- Conclusion: While religion did not invent the desire to control women, it gave patriarchy its most powerful weapon: the illusion of divine eternity. Dismantling misogyny requires recognizing religion as its dedicated guardian, not an innocent bystander.