Woman Between Islam and Western Society
3. Western Woman
~ 136 ~
NATURE’S VERDICT
The equality of man and woman is one of the main
concepts of western civilization. It has been in
vogue in the western world for the last one hundred
years, but that has been quite long enough to show
that, as an experiment in living, it has been a failure.
In spite of women having been legally accorded
equal status with men in many countries, and in
spite of advances in the educational level of women
and their entry into most arenas of economic and
political life, in practice they have yet to achieve an
equal professional status or secure an equal footing
in society. And, meanwhile, the shift in women’s
role and identity in society has led directly to the
breakdown of the family and a serious breakdown
of public morality generally in the West.
Initially, supporters of the concept of equality of the
sexes claimed that the differences between men and
women resulted from environmental influences, but
modem investigation shows that the cause must be
sought elsewhere. Research carried out on a wide
cross-section of society and over a broad range of
different fields has established that this difference,
