What does it teach about men and women — their rights, duties, and roles?

Equity, not sameness. Women own, inherit, consent, and keep their wealth; men owe protection and full maintenance (Qur'an 4:34). Different duties, equal worth.

There is no doctrine of gender roles, since no scripture fixes any. Most contemporary atheists argue that with no divinely assigned roles, full legal and social equality follows — a case made classically by Mill; the organized movement has itself faced internal disputes over sexism, documented by its own members and critics.

Nothing — agnosticism is silent on gender, as on all social questions. In practice agnostics overwhelmingly adopt the egalitarian positions of the liberal and humanist cultures they live in, and surveys of the religiously unaffiliated reflect that.

Equal in creation and salvation: both made in God's image (Genesis 1:27), 'neither male nor female… in Christ' (Galatians 3:28) — while roles are contested. Traditional readings (Catholic, Orthodox, many evangelicals) reserve ordination to men and speak of male headship in marriage (Ephesians 5); egalitarian Protestants ordain women and read those texts as tied to their era. Historians credit early Christianity with raising women's standing in the ancient world, even as the churches long excluded women from office.

Classical halakha assigns distinct roles: women are exempt from many time-bound commandments, are not counted in the traditional prayer quorum, and divorce requires the husband's writ (get) — the root of the modern agunah problem, which Orthodox authorities work to relieve case by case. Reform and Conservative Judaism are egalitarian, ordaining women rabbis since 1972 and 1985 respectively; Orthodoxy keeps distinct roles while greatly expanding women's Torah study.

Both can awaken fully — the Buddha said so, and the Therigatha preserves enlightenment poems by the first nuns. Yet the texts say he founded the nuns' order reluctantly and bound it by extra rules subordinating nuns to monks; full ordination for women later lapsed in Theravada lands, and its modern revival remains contested. In lay life, duties run both ways — including the respect and faithfulness a husband owes his wife.

The texts pull in both directions: the Manusmriti places a woman under the guardianship of father, then husband, then son, yet the same book declares that where women are honored, there the gods rejoice. The tradition venerates the Goddess and canonized women bhakti saints such as Mirabai and Andal while reserving Vedic ritual office to men; modern Hindu law and practice have moved firmly toward equality, though unevenly.

The scripture teaches equality bluntly — why call her inferior, it asks, who gives birth to kings? Women take the same initiation, read the scripture, and lead worship. Sikhs concede practice lags: leadership of the major institutions remains overwhelmingly male, and reformers press the community to live up to its own texts.

Equal citizens with the same rights, offices, and votes; secularism as such assigns no roles to the sexes. Its main historical effect on this question was replacing religious courts with civil family law in many countries — and where religious personal law survives inside a secular state, as in India, the tension is still being argued and litigated.

Full equality — in rights, duties, and roles. The manifestos make discrimination by sex a moral wrong, and organized humanism has long campaigned for women’s rights, including reproductive rights — a stance religious critics contest.

Equal rights, equal citizenship, and roles chosen by individuals rather than assigned by law — Wollstonecraft's Vindication (1792) and Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869) are canon. The record lags the principle: most liberal states denied women the vote until the 20th century, a failure later liberals cite as the principle correcting its own practitioners.

This is its home ground: men and women hold identical rights and duties as citizens, and roles in family and work should be chosen, not assigned by sex. Okin pressed the point furthest — justice must govern the family itself, since that is where citizens are formed.

No shared doctrine. Historically its imagery cast men as the nation's soldiers and women as its mothers and keepers of culture; national movements have both mobilized women — many won the vote through national service and anti-colonial struggle — and confined them to symbolic roles. Scholarship on gender and nation reports both sides of this record.