A Comparative Study of the Islamic and western conceptions of gender

Though modernity revealed women’s humanity (the covert half), it concealed their womanliness (the overt half). To be a human, women must become similar to men as much as possible according to modernity. As a result, woman of modernity is a human being but with all of the manly characteristics. The new ideas, due to ignoring “the reality of womanliness”, are so preoccupied with the commonalities of man and woman that they forgot women and women’s rights. Thus, through ignoring women’s identity, they let women’s security vulnerable to challenge. Women who are able to play a role in a manly society do not usually achieve their all their identity from their womanliness and comply to some extent with manly social roles and functions. But, such women have to pay the expense: men consider them a threat to themselves and resist against their behavioral changes. With respect to such realities, Islam evaluates sexual gender identities of men and women apart form their biological characteristics. As a result, concentration will be on qualitative equality rather than quantitative equality.