[lbo-talk] Women, Religion, and Secular Leftists (was Rabbi Lerner's address on TV!)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Wed Dec 6 15:38:26 PST 2006


On 12/6/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 6, 2006, at 5:43 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Certainly, lack of time goes some way toward explaining the absence of
> > women here and other discussion forums like this one. But lack of
> > time must affect the religious as well, and getting actively involved
> > in the affairs of one's church, etc. surely takes more time than
> > taking part in an online forum.
>
> Ever notice who does most of the talking in churches, synagogues,
> mosques? Men. Women fill the pews, men the pulpits. Women are like
> the unpaid household labor that's kept capitalism going for centuries.

The stained glass ceiling certainly exists, as is discussed by the NYT article I posted at the beginning of this thread: <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20061204/024104.html>.

But it is also true that women who have persevered in various faith traditions have begun to make a difference, the difference that is beginning to emerge in leadership, as the same NYT article mentions: "This year, women were elected to lead the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A." The Islamic Society of North America also elected a woman for its president: Ingrid Mattson: <http://www.isna.com/about/profiles/Ingrid_Mattson.html>.

On the secular Left, too, it is mainly men who do the talking. In the history of formerly existing socialism, few women who rose to the top -- Ana Pauker of Romania, Jiang Qing of China -- were swiftly removed when the political winds changed. I look around the world today, and the gender composition of political leadership on the Left has not changed much, with only Michelle Bachelet here and Ségolène Royal there mainly on the right wing of social democracy. It's men, men, men to their left, and that's really depressing, considering that we are already in the 21st century! While gender is not the only or even most important criterion for me, but, other things being equal (which seldom are), I'd prefer women to men.

If I get a chance, I'd like to do research on who cites whom on the Left, looking into footnotes and bibliographies of books and articles by intellectuals on the Left. My working hypothesis is that male intellectuals on the Left cite few female intelletuals but not vice versa. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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