English Script Request

[Introducer] You are listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.

[Presenter] ...Doctor Jane Leach, and she is here for Thought For The Day, and she's the Principal of Wesley House Methodist College in Cambridge. Morning, Jane.

[Dr. Leach]: Good morning, John. Last night at the Golden Globes, one of Hollywood's most prestigious red carpets turned black, as many actors eschewed their planned outfits in solidarity with those who've suffered sexual assault and rape within the industry. As women from all walks of life will testify, what a woman wears is often the subject of comment, and interpreted as a political statement, whatever she chooses.

From the highly sexualised outfits often seen at such ceremonies to the adoption of the burqa, what clothes, makeup or shoes a woman wears raises issues that what a man wears rarely does, and highlights the ways in which a woman's body, in virtually all cultures, remains an arena in which issues of gender, religion and power are still acted out, most literally and horrifically in the use of rape to manipulate, to dominate, and to pursue the goals of war.

In his book Women, Religion, Violence and Power, former US President Jimmy Carter states that discrimination and violence against women and girls represents the most serious, pervasive and ignored violation of basic human rights that the world faces. The book covers the plight of women and girls: those strangled at birth, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage and genital cutting, as well as those deprived of equal pay and subject to sexual harassment in wealthier nations, those owned by men in others, whilst the most vulnerable are trapped by war and poverty. The book is both a call to action and a pledge of the resources of the Carter Center.

Faith leaders encouraged Carter to publish the book. This is perhaps surprising, as it highlights the ways in which violence and discrimination against women continues to be tacitly or explicitly condoned across the Abrahamic faiths through the selective use of sacred texts.

At the launch of the book in 2014 I was impressed by Carter's own testimony, that he and his wife, who'd been lifelong members of the Southern Baptist Convention, had left that denomination when it reintroduced on women's ordination, partly on the basis that Eve had been responsible for Original Sin. Their choice underlined for me the importance of personal as well as global action, from voting with our feet to choosing what to wear.

Wearing black need not just be a piece of Hollywood. Thursdays In Black is a campaign endorsed by the World Council of Churches since the 1980s, in which both men and women are invited to take part. It invites us not only to wear black on Thursdays, but to work for an end to discrimination, humiliation and violence against women wherever we encounter it, whether in the workplace or in the home, in religious texts or in the war zones of the world.

Jesus, when confronted with a woman about to be stoned by men for alleged adultery, refused to be complicit in their violence and in their use of religious texts to support it, treating her instead as an equal and as a moral agent. We have daily opportunities to do the same.

[Presenter] And that was Thought For The Day with Reverend Doctor Jane Leach.

[Introducer] You are listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.

[Presenter] ...Doctor Jane Leach, and she is here for Thought For The Day, and she's the Principal of Wesley House Methodist College in Cambridge. Morning, Jane.

[Dr. Leach]: Good morning, John. Last night at the Golden Globes, one of Hollywood's most prestigious red carpets turned black, as many actors eschewed their planned outfits in solidarity with those who've suffered sexual assault and rape within the industry. As women from all walks of life will testify, what a woman wears is often the subject of comment, and interpreted as a political statement, whatever she chooses.

From the highly sexualised outfits often seen at such ceremonies to the adoption of the burqa, what clothes, makeup or shoes a woman wears raises issues that what a man wears rarely does, and highlights the ways in which a woman's body, in virtually all cultures, remains an arena in which issues of gender, religion and power are still acted out, most literally and horrifically in the use of rape to manipulate, to dominate, and to pursue the goals of war.

In his book Women, Religion, Violence and Power, former US President Jimmy Carter states that discrimination and violence against women and girls represents the most serious, pervasive and ignored violation of basic human rights that the world faces. The book covers the plight of women and girls: those strangled at birth, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage and genital cutting, as well as those deprived of equal pay and subject to sexual harassment in wealthier nations, those owned by men in others, whilst the most vulnerable are trapped by war and poverty. The book is both a call to action and a pledge of the resources of the Carter Center.

Faith leaders encouraged Carter to publish the book. This is perhaps surprising, as it highlights the ways in which violence and discrimination against women continues to be tacitly or explicitly condoned across the Abrahamic faiths through the selective use of sacred texts.

At the launch of the book in 2014 I was impressed by Carter's own testimony, that he and his wife, who'd been lifelong members of the Southern Baptist Convention, had left that denomination when it reintroduced on women's ordination, partly on the basis that Eve had been responsible for Original Sin. Their choice underlined for me the importance of personal as well as global action, from voting with our feet to choosing what to wear.

Wearing black need not just be a piece of Hollywood. Thursdays In Black is a campaign endorsed by the World Council of Churches since the 1980s, in which both men and women are invited to take part. It invites us not only to wear black on Thursdays, but to work for an end to discrimination, humiliation and violence against women wherever we encounter it, whether in the workplace or in the home, in religious texts or in the war zones of the world.

Jesus, when confronted with a woman about to be stoned by men for alleged adultery, refused to be complicit in their violence and in their use of religious texts to support it, treating her instead as an equal and as a moral agent. We have daily opportunities to do the same.

[Presenter] And that was Thought For The Day with Reverend Doctor Jane Leach.