Religion and Gender-Based Violence: Global and Local Responses to Harmful Practices

Description

This book takes religion as an entry point for a deeper exploration into why practices of gender-based violence continue, and what possible actions might help to contribute to their eradication. International donors are committed to reducing and ending gender-related harm, particularly violence against women, but clear answers as to why harmful practices persist are often slow to emerge. Theological research struggles to find strong links, yet religion is often referred to by local people as the reason for practices such as female cutting, male circumcision, early and forced marriage, nutritional taboos and birth practices, mandatory (un-)veiling, harmful spiritual practices, polygamy, gender unequal marital and inheritance rights and so-called honour crimes. This book presents empirical cases of religious, non-religious and secular actors, including local and international governmental and non-governmental agencies in the fields of development, health and equality policies. Tracing their different understandings of how religion is entangled with gender-based violence both contextually as well as historically, the book sheds light on helpful and unhelpful as well as erroneous and harmful understandings of such practices in local and global perspectives. Centralizing the perspectives of women themselves, this book will be an important read for development practitioners and policy makers, as well as for researchers across religious studies, gender studies, and global development. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Gender, Religion, and Harm: Conceptual and Methodological Reflections 2 The Impact of COVID on Efforts to Reduce FGM and Child Marriage: Understanding the Intersections Between Religion, Gender, and Culture 3 Cousin Marriage Among Turkish and Moroccan Dutch: Debates on Medical Risk and Forced Marriage 4 The Implications of the Securitisation of Mosques for Transformative Masculine Attitudes Towards Harmful Cultural Practices in the UK 5 Izzat and Forced Marriage in the Constructing of Cultural and Religious Identities in the UK 6 Harm and Consent in the Socio-Legal Perspectives on Child Marriage in Iran 7 Understanding the Nexus of Religion, Secularism, and the Harms of Women’s Mandatory Un/Covering 8 Normative Violence, Traditional Healing, and Harm Regarding Same-Sex Relations Among Women in Mozambique 9 The Contradictory Role of the Protestant Church in Changing Female Genital Cutting Among the Maasai: An Ethnographic Exploration 10 So Is It All Just About Sex? Religion and Recognising Harmful Practices in the Need to Control Female Sexuality 11 ‘Faith-full’ Reflections from a Civically Minded, Radically Inclusive, Other Index