Religious Leadership Towards
Ending Violence Against Women

Background and Context:

Interfaith work is one of the fastest growing areas of engagement in governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental spaces around the world. While it is difficult to document concrete numbers, there are ever growing numbers of publications about faith-related work in development, humanitarian, and foreign policy aspects – in English alone – which point to increasing interest in documentation of events, projects and analysis around various domains of such work.

The work of women of faith has been a consistent element of interfaith engagement (read multi-religious work) since its inception. And while leadership of religious institutions and formal representational efforts still tend to be predominantly male-dominated, women are the backbone of institutional and grassroots efforts in all religious communities, and continue to be so, also in interfaith organisations. Even where men lead interfaith organisations, women continue to be key parts of the staff – in some cases, the majority of those serving as staff can be women. Women’s leadership in interfaith settings, therefore, is best exemplified through their service, and not necessarily only through occupying formal overall institutional decision-making.

The Temple of Understanding, one of the world’s oldest interfaith institutions (founded by a woman, Juliet Hollister) with 65 years of service and over 30 years of advocacy at the United Nations, has adopted and worked for over a decade on an eco-justice mandate which includes looking at the systemic violence against women. https://templeofunderstanding.org/womens-initiatives-3/

Inspired by the ToU model and legacy and seeking to harvest lessons learned from decades of interfaith organisational experiences, Lead Integrity was founded in March 2024 as a vehicle to bridge the profit and non-profit worlds of multi-religious wisdom and experiential insights. Lead Integrity seeks to document the living voices of experienced professionals – both men and women – who have acquired a track record of excellence in diverse forms of public service. The unique global Roster of faith-inspired professionals forms a highly selective database of faith-inspired expertise in all areas of human development, peace-making and peace-building, human rights, and humanitarian services. The podcast of leadership conversations focuses on sharing the wisdom of faith-inspired professional expertise, in all these sectors, in diverse corners of the world.

But long before the founding of Lead Integrity, at the 2018 Parliament of World Religions, a special panel of women leaders in various interfaith spaces, coming from different walks of life and working in different regions, was co-convened by the Temple of Understanding’s UN representative, Grove Harris, and the then Convenor of the UN Interagency Task Force on Religion and Development (and now Lead Integrity co-founder), Azza Karam. The panel was the first to explore the specific set of issues faced by women leaders in/of interfaith spaces, naming challenges and best practices of their respective experiences. Common themes emerged from these conversations, including the persistence of patriarchal norms and values (also supported by some women and leveraged against one another), the diverse forms of violence and exclusionary practices therein, and the link between the latter and the ‘glass ceiling’ within many interfaith organisations.

This discussion was followed up on the following year, in 2019, as a UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) side-event co-hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). In these discussions, issues relevant to the various forms of violence – including verbal – were noted. A link was made to the need for spiritual resilience, as well as a call for concerted efforts to secure multiple forms of solidarity for/with women, and the importance of engaging men of faith and secular ones as part of the necessary bridge building (including with secular rights’ organisations) to support women’s leadership.

In 2021, another virtual sequel to this conversation was co-hosted by Religion for Peace, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, the Faith Trust Institute and the International Academy for Multicultural Cooperation. These discussions focused, deliberately and exclusively for the first time, on sexual harassment – as one of the multiple forms of violence against women – practiced in interfaith settings. The meeting discussed patterns of sexual harassment, and the challenges inherent in seeking to address them within interfaith settings, and addressed some ways forward, including focusing on the need for spiritual healing, involving religious leaders in seeking solutions and continuing to host these conversations in safe spaces. The report is available online.

In 2024, the Temple of Understanding partnered with Lead Integrity to harvest some of these discussions, with a view to the continuity advocated in all these varied settings. This time, the conversations focused on violence against women in political spaces, inspired in large part by the fact that 2024 was the year where the greatest number of national political elections took place. This was certainly the case most notably – and most recently – in the United States. Given the prevalence of the theme of political violence against women in political settings, and especially given the number of armed conflicts where politics and violence were so intertwined, it was decided to host the conversation in two parts. The first took place December 1, 2024 and is available online. Part two will be part of the 2025 CSW.

Objectives of CSW Panel:

1. To share experiential narratives (challenges and opportunities) around various forms of violence against women in diverse political spaces;
2. To propose concrete recommendations for addressing some of these phenomena for interfaith spaces, for the United Nations and other intergovernmental fora (optional) and for broader civil society actors;
3. To grow a network of global faith inspired women leaders committed to solidarity with one another and to being sources of wisdom for governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental settings around these issues, from various walks of life.

Means of Engagement: Roundtable of Experts

To that end, a Roundtable of experts, with experiences of living, and working, with issues of violence against women, inspired by diverse faith traditions, and from different regions of the world, will be convened, virtually, as a parallel event to the CSW on March 18th, 2025, 10:30 – noon Eastern.

Speakers will address three questions:

• What are the highlights of your personal experience and/or professional experience of violence against women in political spaces?
• What would be your 1-3 (max) recommendations to either governments, the UN or interfaith and secular civil society organisations to address this?
• How might you serve an informal Network of faith-inspired experts on violence against women?

Outcomes of the Roundtable:

• A video recording of the proceedings will be promoted on both ToU and Lead Integrity websites.
• A brief narrative co-published Report documenting the background, highlights and summary from this and the previous session co-hosted by ToU and Lead Integrity
• Development of a Network of Faith-Inspired experts on violence against women in politics committed to mentoring, documenting stories and advocacy with governmental and intergovernmental actors around the recommendations which emerged, with annual reporting each CSW moving forward.