Gender Roles? – On gender roles in the world's religions
Thematic field of the exhibition "Body. Cult. Religion."
Male and female are central, but not absolute categories of physicality, which are also religiously legitimised and defined, from which role attributions – social, reproductive and sexual – arise. In scholarship, a distinction is often made between the ‘biological’ gender on the one hand, i.e. the gender assigned to a person on the basis of physiological attributes, and social gender on the other hand, which refers to behavioural expectations that are associated with biological gender.
In all ancient communities of antiquity, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also in Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, there is a fundamental subordination of women to men. The second creation account in the Bible, for example, states that Eve was created from Adam‘s side and makes it clear that woman is subordinate to man. In the so-called tantric forms of Hindu and Buddhist-influenced religiosity that spread from India to Central and East Asia, gender polarity takes on a prominent symbolic significance, with the female often representing transcendent wisdom and the male its compassionate and skilful practical implementation – a view that is less familiar to European cultures.
