likely to demean the other. In practice it is nearly always the preferential
treatment of men over women, or behaviour by men which is degrading to
women. Unequal pay for women doing equivalent jobs to men, unequal
promotion prospects and governmental or institutional policies which dis-
criminate against women (intentionally or otherwise) are sexist, as are attitudes
which belittle the potential contribution of women in society, generally by
treating them as domestic and sexual commodities of men. Many areas where
sexistdiscriminationhas been prevalent have begun to be taken care of by,
for example,equality of opportunitylegislation in employment matters,
which is at least partially effective in most Western democracies. Even there,
however, government inertia and administrative incompetence continues. For
example the 1990 tax reform in the United Kingdom was non-sexist in
legislating that married men and women should be taxed separately, but still
retained a special tax allowance for married men which was not granted to
married women—the assumption being that a husband would earn more than
a wife (this tax allowance was subsequently made transferable between husband
and wife, and then abolished). In private life, and in the areas of employment
not covered by legislation, sexism is still very common as a pattern of
behaviour. Early apparent evidence that legislation was making a major inroad
on sex discrimination is now doubted. What seems to have happened is that
women initially made great progress but then came up against what has been
termed the ‘glass ceiling’ in terms of promotions. Thus though a majority of
graduates into the legal profession are now women, the number of women
partners in major law firms is seriously unrepresentative of that fact. Similarly
in nearly all professions there remains evidence of underpayment of women
compared with men.
Shari‘a
Shari‘a is a general term for Islamic law, referring, as near as it is possible to
make an analogy, to the body of precedent and interpretation which makes up
common law in the Anglo-American conception of law. As such it is not just
abstract legal philosophy, but neither is it concrete statutes legislated by Islamic
governments. It derives, in theory at least, from the Koran, but more practically
from a long tradition of interpretation and intellectual development by legal
scholars and practising Shari‘a lawyers. Until relatively recently, the absence of
any state overtly and fully dedicated to the application of Islamic law had
restricted the area in which Shari‘a developed; it had come to apply mainly in
areas outside major state interest, particularly family and inheritance law. In the
last 30 years, Islamic political fundamentalism has given impetus to a much
broader development of Shari‘a law because of a need for a well-developed
legal code for those countries, notably Pakistan, which have set themselves the
Shari‘a