Well, there's no denying the male-dominated ratios among famous religious figures in history--at least, when we're discussing the religions most familiar to us today. But I don't see how this differs in kind from the male-dominated ratios you find among famous figures in any field in history. The religious specialty reflects ideas about gender roles that exist in the society as a whole.
My first thought on reading your OP was that it was terribly imprecise. I wondered if Admins might ask you to rework it before going public. Your claim to 'gender radar', for example, is surely based on the different ways men and women are socialized in their use of language. But, as
Crashfrog advises, it's best not to be too confident on this point. A number of other factors besides gender influence individuals' use of language. Start thinking you've got the code cracked and you'll get stomped in online gaming.
The other sloppy element, I thought, was the premise:
Historically the vast majority of religious debate and prophesy and writing has been done by males.
You don't really know this. How can you quantify 'debate and prophecy'? When you stood in the market square in Delphi and listened to all the religious debates going on around you, did you do a gender count? How much access do you have to all the prophecies uttered by temple priestesses and priests over the centuries? With the debates that take place within the walls of convents and monasteries around the world? Within the halls of all the churches and religious centers around the world in which, studies suggest, women are more likely to be actively involved than men?
When you turn to 'writing' you are on safer ground. Documented statements about religion in the traditions most familiar to us exhibit a ratio that skews male.
But before one assumes on that basis that males have been doing most of the discussing
at all, we might first ask if men's thoughts were more likely to be
recorded than women's. I think they were.
For much of the history you are discussing men had access to education that was denied to women. In most societies the genders were also much more segregated in everday life than they are today. This tended to put men in the company of scribes who could write down what they said and keep women out of earshot of anyone who could write what
they said. And if it came down to one person, well, a man was more likely to be able to write his own thoughts down than a woman.
It's worth remembering, too, that not everything attributed to a male author was necessarily authored by a man. Women have often used male-sounding pen names in history. Redactors have often attributed women's thoughts to men. Many scholars suspect much or all of The Song of Moses, for example, was originally The Song of Miriam. You also have the question of the invention that lies behind the authorship. The influence of a teacher can be profound. Much of Eckhart's philosophy was clearly influenced by his conversations with nuns. How many of the ideas in his sermons reflect theirs?
Consider too that many of our ancient literary documents preserve oral traditions. This raises the question of the gender ratio among the bards, singers, and elders who were the original tellers of these stories. The gender ratio among the original storytellers was surely different than it would have been among the scribes who wrote the stories down.
We find an imbalance, yes. But the premise as we have it in the OP makes way too many glib assumptions.
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Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : tinkering.
Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.
Archer
All species are transitional.
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