Gender

Gender is a system of social relations, learned ways of acting and how we visualize image representations, all learned through our culture intertwined to create our gender identity. Different countries worldwide have different teachings and ideologies upon gender, shaping the individual and creating gendered barriers, illustrating what is 'normal' and 'abnormal' within a particular society. Religion in particular is one of the main underlying foundations which a society's culture and gendered teachings are based upon, and throughout my source report I intend to uncover the history of gender and religion and the international issues and how religious beliefs shape thinking’s in a plethora of different cultures through looking at different sources ranging from the media to academic evidence.
Amongst the world’s religions is a plethora of varying attitudes and beliefs towards gender issues and normality’s. However, these beliefs and attitudes were once the norm and were not questioned in the seventeenth century. Witchcraft was a large belief then, with many women in touch with the devil and failing to "conform to the accepted norms of female behavior", "The behavioral opposite of the stereotypical role model of the good wife."(Louise Jackson: Witches, Wives and Mother: Witchcraft persecution and women's confessions in seventeenth-century England: 1995:63-84).
Louise Jackson's research was based upon a Suffolk subversive community in the seventeenth century within the Christian society where any woman who didn't show the typical "good wife" characteristics could be branded a witch, and routine witch hunts would be carried to remove such from society, almost like a method of behavioral control to members of society. Even back in the seventeenth century, there is evidence of gendered differences, with 80% to 90% of witches accused female. There is also evidence in Louise Jackson’s study of physical violence, with many witchcraft trails "involving physical coercion"... [continues]

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