Women; more than just statistics

There are 7.5 billion people living on earth and women constitute more than the half of that number. This is not a mere statistical number. They are our loved ones; mothers, sisters and wives. The number of men who feel no love for a woman is so few that they could be counted on the fingers of a hand.

Yet women, one of the most beautiful aspects of our lives, live under constant oppression. Sometimes they suffer unfair insults and disrespect when they should be treated with love and courtesy instead. In some circles, societal rules and peer pressure always tend to dominate women and dictate how to live their lives. Most women’s husbands, fathers, brothers, relatives, bosses, colleagues and teachers virtually deem it a duty to curtail their freedoms. Billions of women are seen as potential sinners at any given moment and treated as beings that need to be kept under constant control. This is a widespread disease that afflicts the entire world. Whether the man who enforces this system of oppression lives in the East or the West, an atheist or religious, a scientist or an illiterate usually does not change this fact.

Eastern societies are the first thing that comes to mind when the subject of women's oppression is mentioned; anti-religious circles, in particular, try to present the societal rules that promote the oppression of women as an inherent part of Islam. However, this is a disaster brought about not by Islam, but by the superstitious religious conception. This misogynistic so-called religious structure is a bigoted mentality diametrically opposed to the most fundamental values of Islam. On the contrary, women are praised and held in high regard in the Qur'an. God commands to always treat women with love and respect.

This problem can also be observed in Western societies under different ideologies. Darwinism, one of the principle ideologies underlying Western culture, presumed that woman, compared to man, is a life form who has yet to complete her evolutionary process. In fact, Charles Darwin, the founder of the theory of evolution, is a classic misogynist. In his book titled The Descent of Man, Darwin writes, “It is generally admitted that with women the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strikingly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization.”¹

Fascism and communism, owing their inspiration to Darwinism, also emerged as misogynistic ideologies. In Nazi Germany, the standing rule was that no more than the 10% of high school graduates were allowed to be girls. In 1929, there were 39 National Socialist educational institutions but only two among them were for girls. According to the Nazis, a woman's duty was to be impregnated in breeding farms by young German men whom they had never seen before in their lives and give birth to a new Aryan race.

Shortly after the Bolshevik revolution, a law was introduced dictating that all women between the ages of 17 and 32 were properties of the state. Supposedly liberated from the yoke of their husbands, these women were put to work in mines and factories under the severest conditions. In the eyes of communism, women were little more than a new labor force.

It would be far-fetched to suggest that the modern Western societies are one step ahead of their century-old predecessors. Capitalism has reduced women to just another commodity to be sold or purchased. States sometimes not only encourage, even tariff, this vile trade.

But, then again, in Western societies women are still fighting for equal citizenship rights. In many countries, women were granted the right of suffrage only in the last 70-80 years. Only one in five members of the US Congress is woman. Workplaces continue to remain riddled with sexist conduct against women. In a sexist tirade, a Polish member of the European Parliament argued not long ago that women should earn less than men because they are supposedly weaker and less intelligent. Today, social media, the Internet, video games, newspapers, magazines, TV series, movies and books have largely become platforms where women face discrimination. 

Not only in the Eastern societies, but also in the Western world, scores of women perish at the hands of their husbands every year. In 40% of femicide cases around the world, the murderer is either the husband, a fiancé or a boyfriend. In the EU, one out of every five woman suffers violence from her husband. In Canada, one out of every two women has suffered physical violence or sexual abuse at least once after the age of 16. Every year, some five million women worldwide are subjected to domestic violence and abuse by their husbands. One-fifth of these downtrodden women had to receive medical treatment as a result of the violence they went through. In the USA, in 2006 alone, the number of women who were victims of rape or sexual abuse was 240,000. As one can clearly see, when it comes to misogyny, the whole world, Western and Eastern, displays more or less the same atrocious characteristics.  

Such level of oppression dims the glow of life within women, hampering their enthusiasm and happiness towards life. Women, under pressure, have become reluctant to look, to feel beautiful and attractive. The world has become deprived of feminine beauty. The world has also largely become deprived of women's wisdom, productivity, diligence and aptitude for elaborate thinking. This wonderful blessing has been wrested away from our life as a consequence of the misogynistic oppression.

So long as women, the ornaments of the world, are not happy and free, the world will remain incomplete. Quality, arts and aesthetics will see no progress. One of the most pivotal forces that will end violence and establish the culture of peace on Earth is love for women. As women become more beautiful, they will beautify the world along with them. The more respect women are shown, the more livable the world will become.

1. John R. Durant, The Ascent of Nature in Darwin's Descent of Man" in The Darwinian Heritage, Ed. by David Kohn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 295.

Adnan Oktar's piece in The Sun Daily (Malaysia) & BERNAMA (Malaysia) & The Borneo Post (Malaysia) & Riyadh Vision (Saudi Arabia):

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2017/09/06/women-more-statistics

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v8/fe/newsfeatures.php?id=1388892

http://www.riyadhvision.com.sa/2017/09/07/women-more-than-just-statistics/