A Baha’i Perspective on Gender Equality

December 5th, 2006

One thing that I like about being a Baha’i is that one is never “done” becoming a Baha’i. In our community we sometimes use the expression that “deciding to become a Baha’i doesn’t mean that you’ve arrived, it only means you’ve decided to buy a ticket.” This means that there is always much more to learn, but it also means that you can occasionally look back on what you have learned over time. In my own case, I find one thing that has changed is my understanding of the equality of women and men. Below I’ve traced the issues of valuing women for more than their looks and balancing the masculine and feminine within ourselves. In each case, the process starts with becoming more aware of the issue which leads to making some personal changes and finally to developing a broader awareness of how the issue is playing out in society.

I became a Baha’i when I was 28 and already married. In my relationships before I dated my wife, I always put a very high value on my partner’s looks and sexual availability. My respect for them as intelligent human beings was secondary. I was very fortunate that when my wife and I started dating, we had already been good friends for five years. I respected her on many different levels. This was the first time that I had a partner that I thought of as a whole human being. However, in my head, I often valued people, especially women, too much based on their looks.

Most of the people who taught me about the Baha’i Faith were women. Some of us became very good friends and they shared things with me about their life experiences. From these discussions, I began to develop awareness that incidents of domestic violence, rape, childhood sexual abuse and just plain sexual harassment were far more prevalent than I would have previously believed. According to statistics given at http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/, up to one third of American Women have reported being abused by their partners. This does not include childhood sexual abuse or even rape by people other than their partners. Based on my own personal experience with women that I have gotten to know well enough to talk about such issues, I would say that these estimates might be low.

Having become more aware of this issue, I could see that for many of my women friends, the result of these events had left life long scars that affected their relationships with others and also their view of themselves as being valuable human beings. I also began to realize that at the root of most of this damage was an insecure male ego that viewed women primarily as sexual beings. It was clear to me from the Baha’i teachings that God does not view our gender as being particularly significant, and wishes for us to recognize each others spiritual qualities more so than our physical ones. It was also clear to me that I had some work to do, since I was still placing too much emphasis on physical attributes. So for almost 20 years, through studying the Baha’i writings, talking with others, praying, meditating, and redirecting my inner dialog with myself, I have been working on trying to appreciate women’s spiritual qualities above their physical qualities.

As I began to try to do this, I became aware of how many social forces reinforce the idea that women are primarily sexual beings. Movies, newspapers, video games, television, and magazines are all full of advertisements and characters that reinforce a model that says clearly that a woman’s main worth is how attractive she is. This is often done in the most sensational and provocative way possible. After all, sex sells. To change this culture into one that is truly interested in treating women and men as equals, people of both genders are going to have to speak out.

(Note that I left out the booming pornography trade which I think is an abomination in so many ways that I can’t begin to address them all here.)

In 1997, there was a pamphlet put out by the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States entitled: Two Wings of a Bird. This brief document lead me to the realization that part of creating gender equity in the world involves finding gender equity within ones self. That is, we all have the ability to balance our masculine and feminine qualities. In this document, Abdu’l- Baha is quoted as saying “The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the balance is already shifting; force is losing its dominance, and mental alertness, intuition and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy.” From this quote and other passages within the Baha’i writings, it became clear to me that within each of us we have a combination of traditional male qualities like forcefulness and traditional female qualities like love and service. Bringing about equality of women and men is not just a social phenomenon but one that takes place within each of us individually.

Again, to take this to a personal level, it meant working on developing my less often used qualities like intuition, love, and service. In this case I was helped in this process because a number of Baha’is had come to similar conclusions. Now, we get together periodically to talk about what type of things we are trying in order to balance these aspects of our lives. In a typical weekend session, the men will all meet together and consult about the issues that they deal with and the women will do the same. When the men are together, we make a list of issues and questions that we would like to discuss with the women and the women do the same. The women and men then all meet together and discussion the issues on the list. This has proven to be a very powerful format for sharing.

As to the wider implications of this concept, I think it is painfully obvious that world leaders, who are predominantly male, are trying to solve their differences by using their traditionally male qualities of forcefulness and aggression. It simply is not working very well. A more collaborative dialog with a wider range of problem solving skills will require more reliance on the traditionally female qualities and is sorely needed to settle some of the long standing conflicts that the world faces.

A recent publication by the Baha’i international community entitled: Beyond Legal Reforms:Culture and Capacity in the Eradication of Violence Against Women and Girls now has some points that I need to understand better. I have read it twice and there is much to think about and discuss with others. And so I continue the process of becoming a Baha’i.

Note that there are other documents regarding the Baha’i teachings on the equality of women and men listed at: http://info.bahai.org/article-1-8-0-4.html

I guess that’s all for now. Thanks once again to Christina for allowing me to present an alternative to the “spin machine” view of men and women.

May you all be well and happy.

Mike

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