“All over the world, and in particular in Quebec, the emancipation of women could not be achieved without their emancipation from religions”, this is what the late universalist feminist Diane Guilbault said in 2019.
Thus, by ensuring the religious neutrality of civil servants in positions of authority, the Act respecting the secularism of the State of Quebec (Bill 21) brings an essential milestone to women’s right to equality. It is therefore appropriate, on this International Women’s Rights Day, to celebrate it.
Taking religion into account when it comes to women’s rights leads to the confinement of some women in a religious patriarchy, contrary to equality between the sexes. Of course, women have always chosen to resist their emancipation. Some have opposed, for example, the right to vote or access to abortion, following religious precepts. Still others find comfort in religious patriarchy.
However, a society that promotes equality has a responsibility to remind its citizens that they are not required to submit to sexist religious practice. To tell them that wearing a religious symbol is their absolute right. But also to explain to them why they cannot wear it when they occupy a position of authority in the Quebec public service.
State secularism is one of the conditions sine qua non to put an end to the inequalities affecting women, inequalities promoted by the great monotheistic religions. By ensuring the religious neutrality of the State, secularism protects certain public places from the influence of sexist religious practices on its citizens.
The promotion of secularism is also part of feminist strategies to counter religious fundamentalisms. Indeed, according to the Association for Women’s Rights and Development, women’s rights activists in Latin America, without exception, as well as the vast majority of activists in Western Europe, have named the secularism of the state as the most urgent measure there is to prevent the strengthening of religious fundamentalisms. This is also what Afghans, Iranians, Saudis and many other women living under the yoke of theocracies demand to defend their rights.
promotion at school
Equality between women and men is a recognized right and one of Québec’s fundamental values. In an egalitarian society, the State is responsible for intervening to ensure that these essential principles are transmitted to the students under its responsibility.
By prohibiting the display of religious symbols by teachers, Bill 21 ensures that sexist signs, contrary to equality between women and men, are not promoted among our young people. To do otherwise would be to be complicit in the discrimination they impose, expose and propagate.
Indeed, religious signs are, with a few exceptions, resolutely differentiated for women and for men, and each of them conveys a distinct social status, values, roles and responsibilities, which exacerbates their sexist nature. . State neutrality in public primary and secondary schools protects our young people, who are particularly vulnerable at these ages, from sexist religious practices.
Of course, it is not the role of the state to regulate religious sexism. It is nevertheless its duty to ensure that its institutions are exempt from it, since it is contrary to the achievement of de facto equality between women and men.
Thus, by limiting the exposure of sexist religious practices within its institutions, the Law on the secularism of the State constitutes an essential milestone in the right of women to equality, to be celebrated on this International Women’s Rights Day!