Cecille Rushton

From Philosopedia

Rushton, Cecilie (20th Century)

Rushton, a senior female district court judge in New Zealand, is author of Realising Women’s Rights—The Constraints, in The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist (December 1993). She questions whether, inasmuch as New Zealand is a signatory to the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, religionists may continue to impose their discriminatory practices in the name of religious freedom. She also opposes respecting practices of indigenous peoples when they are discriminatory against women. In the article she finds that “religion has not been kind to women. Ironically in Christian countries the most devout adherents of the faith are women. Women, ‘liberated’ from religion by Marxism, now flock back to the church.” The Talmud, she notes, “launches an all-out attack on women. The Testament of Reuben 5:1-2 sees women as intrinsically evil:

For women are evil. . . and since they have no power or strength over men, they use wiles by outward attractions, that they may drawn him to themselves. And whom they cannot bewitch by outward attractions, him they overcome by craft.

Jubilee 25:1 states:

Let the words of torah rather be destroyed by fire than imparted to women.

Other writings of Judaism similarly depict masculinity as normal and femininity as a deviation.

Christianity similarly has an anti-female bias, particularly because of St. Paul’s teachings, and she cites numerous examples.

Islam, which she estimates as having close to half a billion women adherents, is the most detrimental of the major religions to women. Although Mohammed was not misogynistic, the interpretation of Islamic writings have disadvantaged women not only in Saudi Arabia but in other countries, she claims. Separateness and veiling are practices which discourage feminism, and Surah 2 of the Qur’an states that “Your wives are as a tilth unto you, so approach your tilth when and how you will,” equating women with cultivated land and leading to masculine views that they have the right to impregnate their wives at will.

“Custom, often inextricably mixed with religion,” she writes, “is again used to exclude women from decision-making roles and positions of influence. This is exemplified in many of the Pacific Island countries, although much of the genuine custom has been destroyed by missionaries and replaced by rules and mores imported from the narrower aspects of other cultures.”

She describes how the Maori women in New Zealand are forbidden to speak at tribal meeting grounds, and even the television game shows exclude women as moderators for to do otherwise, the director of production at Television New Zealand has stated, “would mean a great break with tradition.”