Indigenous Women Face More Religious Discrimination Than Men Rebecca Paveley - Church Times
go to original May 27, 2022

Participants from Jalisco (CSW)

Indigenous women in Mexico experience more religious discrimination than their male family members, new research into the lives of religious-minority women has found.

Some discrimination against religious minorities affects women exclusively, and has been under-reported until now, the charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) said.

The charity’s report Let Her Be Heard compiles violations of the right to freedom of religion and belief for women. Women who refused to join the majority Roman Catholic faith have faced harassment and exclusion from the justice system, government benefit programmes and services, and prenatal health care.

The report says that, although the Mexican constitution guarantees freedom of religion or belief and other human rights to all its citizens, in practice, violations are a common occurrence in certain regions: in particular, for indigenous communities that are governed under the Law of Uses and Customs.

The law was intended to protect indigenous communities’ rights to maintain their cultural and traditional methods of governing, with a caveat that this must accord with human-rights legislation. In practice, however, this is not monitored. “As a result, in many communities a religious majority attempts to enforce religious uniformity, with consequences ranging in severity for members of religious or belief minorities who do wish to practise a faith of their choosing or no faith,” the report says.

Most violations of human rights and freedom of religion or belief go unpunished, it continues, owing to a “culture of impunity”.

CSW held focus groups and interviews with women from indigenous communities to explore their experiences.

Read the rest at Church Times

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