Gender Equality, Religion, and Sustainable Development in Southern Africa

The different cultural and religious understandings of gender and sustainable development have impacted sustainable development worldwide and, ostensibly, in Africa. While promoting gender equality has been universally regarded as an ingredient in accelerating the attainment of sustainable development goals in Africa, religious and cultural philosophical contestations are holding it back. Religion and culture have socially constructed and shaped people’s behaviors, values, and ways of life differently within their communities. These social constructs include the way people interpret gender equality and sustainable development. As predicted in the preceding, the universalization and particularization of gender equality and sustainable development principles have become one of the post-independence African challenges resulting in the lack of efficiency, conformity, and uniformity in implementing sustainable development goals in most developing countries. While the universalization of gender equality and sustainable development faces challenges of cultural relativities, the particularization of gender equality and sustainable development principles impedes attaining global competitiveness in developing countries. Underpinned by cross-cultural and religious perspectives, this theoretical, qualitative desktop research seeks to unravel the challenges associated with the intersectionality of gender, religion, and sustainable development in Southern Africa. The study relies on the existing literature, theories, and grey literature as information sources on the challenges of attaining gender equality and sustainable development in Africa. The study established the unresolved rivalry of the global cultural epistemologies of the global north and south in understanding gender equality, religious systems, and sustainable development governance systems. The study recommends employing critical cultural hermeneutics and relativism to create harmony between different cultural and religious beliefs of gender equality and sustainable development governance systems in Africa.