World Watch Monitor, March 19, 2019
The UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) barely mentions in their documents and declarations how far women find themselves marginalized due to their religious belief.
Yet 83% of global women identify with a religious faith, according to the Pew Research Center. Gender-specific persecution research done by Open Doors International seems to be the only research looking at this in detail. Yet millions of women face this double discrimination, for their faith and their gender, every day.
Women are targeted for their faith in 42 out of 77 countries where, to enforce religious norms, violence is used against religious minorities.
Sexual assault, forced marriage and rape are the most-reported pressures experienced for their faith by Christian women in 57% of the countries surveyed in the latest report from Open Doors.
Governments and non-state actors sometimes perpetrate or tolerate these injustices to intimidate or drive out disfavoured religious groups, as in the cases of Yazidi women in IS-controlled territory, and religious and ethnic minorities, including Rohingya Muslims and Kachin Christians, in Burma.