Women Were Created with the Exact Same Spiritual and Intellectual Capacity as Men, So of Course They Can Lead

Abstract

There is no justification whatsoever on a Qur’anic basis for preventing women from filling any leadership role, whether as religious leaders or imams or judges or heads of state. A large number of verses addressing men and women make it clear that both bear equal responsibility for building their societies. Moreover many Qur’anic verses addressing women’s issues came as a response to one or more woman’s activism at the time. Objectors to women’s leadership usually push back against women’s advancement primarily by citing supposed hadith denouncing women as such, and on some topics they appear to be virtually grasping at straws. A particularly strange yet common objection claims that the Prophet had said that no nation that entrusts its affairs to a woman can succeed, yet the historical evidence from his time and medieval jurist support for women as leaders tell a different story.