women’s Equality in Quranic Society

women’s Equality in Quranic Society

A DUAL SEX RATHER THAN UNISEX SOCIETY

Now let us
consider the second basic characteristic of the Quranic society which affects
the position of women. This is found in
the directives for a dual sex rather than a unisex society. While maintaining
the validity of the equal worth of men and women,
the Qur’an does not judge this equality to mean equivalence or identity of the
sexes.

Probably
all of you are familiar with the contemporary move toward unisex clothes and
shoes, unisex jewellery and hair styles, unisex actions and entertainments. In
fact, it is often difficult in America to decide whether one is looking at a
boy or a girl. This results from the current notion in Western society that
there is little if any difference between the two sexes in physical,
intellectual and emotional endowment; and that, therefore, there should be no
difference in their functions and roles in society. The dress and the actions
are but superficial evidence of this deeper conviction. Accompanied by a
downgrading of the qualities and roles traditionally associated with the female
sex, this current idea has generated a unisex society in which only the male
role is respected and pursued. Although meant to bring a larger measure of equality
for women, the idea that men and women are not only equal, but equivalent and
identical, has actually pushed women
into imitating men and even despising their womanhood. Thus it is generating a
new type of male chauvinism. Tremendous social pressures have resulted in
stripping women of their
role-responsibilities formerly performed by them, and they are forced to live a
life devoid of personality and individuality.

The society
based on the Qur’an is, in contrast, a dual-sex society in which both sexes are
assigned their special responsibilities. This assures the healthy functioning
of the society for the benefit of all its members. This division of labour
imposes on men more economic responsibilities (2:233, 240-241; 4:34), while women are expected to play their role in
childbearing and rearing (2:233; 7:189). The Qur’an, recognising the importance
of this complementary sexual assignment of roles and responsibilities,
alleviates the greater economic demands made on male members of the population
by allotting them a larger share than women
in inheritance. At the same time it grants women
the right to maintenance in exchange for her contribution to the physical and
emotional well being of the family and to the care she provides in the rearing
of children. The unisex ideology generates a competitive relationship between
the sexes which we find in America and which is disastrous for all members of
society: the young; the old; the children; the parents; the single and the
married; the male and the female. The dual-sex society, by contrast, is a more
natural answer to the question of sexual relationships, a plan encouraging
co-operation rather than competition between the sexes. It is a plan which has
been found suitable in countless societies through history. Only in very recent
times did the idea of sexual non-differentiation or identity achieve
prominence, and then primarily in the Western society. Even the medical
evidence for mental or emotional difference between the sexes is suppressed in
Western research, for it threatens the prevailing trends of thought. How long
this socially disastrous movement will continue before it is rejected as
bankrupt is not known. But certainly we as Muslims should be aware of its
deficiencies and dangerous consequences, and make our societies and young
people aware of the disaster caused by it.

Protagonists of the unisex society have condemned the dual-sex human
organization as dangerous for the well-being of women.
If dual sex means that one sex is superior to the other, such a situation could
have arisen. But in the true Quranic society, toward which we all aspire to
move, this is not possible. As we have seen above, the Qur’an advocates
eloquently the equal status of women and
men at the same time as it recognizes their generally relevant differences of
nature and function. Thus while acknowledging the religious, ethical,
intellectual and legal equality of males and females; the Qur’an never regards
the two sexes as identical or equivalent. It justifies this stand in its
assignment of variant responsibilities and its provisions regarding inheritance
and maintenance which match those responsibilities.