Gender

Religion Shaping Gender

Religion has played an important role in defining the meaning of gender both as a symbol and in practice. In ancient times, religions assigned gender to various aspects of the natural world—the earth, rivers, mountains, sun, moon, and stars—which in turn were associated with spiritual power. In an ancient Aztec myth, Coatlicue, an earth goddess, gives birth to the sun (male) and the moon (female). In indigenous Chinese religion, all aspects of the universe derive from the interplay of two opposing forces, symbolized as yin (feminine) and yang (masculine).

The designation of gender was often, but not always, connected to inherent characteristics of the natural object or to human gender roles in the culture. The sun was a male deity in ancient Egypt but female in Canaan. Goddesses associated with grain production and warrior gods in the ancient Near East corresponded to men's and women's activities. But we find both male and female deities associated with warfare and with fertility in these cultures.

During the axial age, the traditions that were to become what we now call the major world religions began to articulate the divine as transcending nature, but gender symbolism persisted. In Hinduism, gods and goddesses came to be understood as personifications of one underlying divine reality. Yet deities continue to display characteristics and behavior mirroring the roles of human males and females in Indian society. Sometimes the divine couple is understood as a model for human behavior (e.g., Sita's chaste and submissive relationship to Rama). Other times, the gods symbolize broader spiritual forces (e.g., the carnal embrace of Shiva and Shakti). In the major monotheistic religions, divine transcendence of nature meant a decoupling from sexuality—God became an asexual being. God continued to have a gender but was now exclusively masculine: in Judaism as Lord and King, in Christianity as Father and Son. While Islam has stricter sanctions against the anthropomorphizing of God, the language of the Qur'an addresses God as masculine.

The idea of divine transcendence of nature in the major world religions was accompanied by a new use of gender symbols: the spiritual, eternal dimension is increasingly symbolized as masculine, while the female is associated with the material, temporary world and the human condition of passion and sexuality. We see this in Hindu philosophy: Purusha (spirit) is male, while Prakrti (matter) is female, a distinction that carries over to the conceptualization of Brahman (eternal divine consciousness) as masculine versus maya (the temporary illusory material world) as feminine. We also see it in Jewish tradition, where god is masculine (Father, Lord, King), while the people of Israel may be understood as feminine (bride of God), and in Christianity, where Jesus is male and the church is the bride of Christ. The emergence of such gender dualism in religion served to legitimate and enforce the unequal power relationships between men and women: If females are more passionate, more sexual, they are also less rational and morally suspect and therefore must be controlled by males. The use of gendered religious symbols, then, shapes how we understand what gender means.

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