Keeping Faith in Development

Facts and figures about developing countries illustrate a situation in which women’s freedom and fulfillment is constrained by men. In the light of the current faith-development interface, it is important to understand why sex oppression and gender discrimination within the household is fading in some developing countries while remaining intact in others. Some conventional assumptions maintain that living standards and cultural traits are key determinants to the modernization of social values and practices. These assumptions are tested in a large cross-national analysis. Religion and existential security constitute a substantial joint explanation, but the variance appears to be too co-dependent on historic and geographic specificities. This implies that only smaller cross-national research on intra-cultural differences yields insight on the specific causes of familial patriarchy as well as the best approaches in the faith-development interface.