Blindspot!
From Issue: 765 [Read full issue]
Female, Male
No human society has ever succeeded in promoting complete equality between women and men. We still have a long way to go. Even though the old representations that associated women with the body, seduction and impurity have been done away with - albeit not entirely in certain traditional societies or in some fundamentalist or literalist circles - the fact remains that we have yet to achieve the objectives of justice, the absence of social discrimination and the right to autonomy and equal pay. We find in all societies - without exception - social and cultural behaviours that encourage the ill treatment of women, domestic violence and the stigmatization and marginalization of girls.
And yet neither women nor men can make it on their own. They must walk together along the road of the quest for meaning as they assert the existence of a shared universal and as they demand freedom, dignity, autonomy and justice. They are equal but not the same, and both men and women must allow the other to bring their distinctive outlook towards the resolution of common problems. Within this partnership, both men and women will be able to take a new look at the basic questions of meaning, freedom, masculinity, paternity and authority by coming to terms with what they are. Their beings and their paths may well be distinct, but their destinations and their hopes are surely the same.
Compiled From:
"The Quest for Meaning" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 92-95