Breaking down the question
The question is framed as a yes-or-no — "are all world religions patriarchal?" — but the word all is the trap and the opportunity. A blanket "yes" or "no" is weak; the examiner is inviting a qualified, evidence-based answer that recognises a strong general pattern while resisting a crude universal claim. The instruction to "substantiate with examples" makes concrete illustration non-negotiable.
A first-class response distinguishes between the institutional and textual dimensions of religion, which have very largely been patriarchal, and the presence within religious traditions of goddess worship, egalitarian currents, women's agency and reform movements, which complicate the picture. The task is to hold both in view and reach a defensible overall judgement.
At 20 marks you should range across several traditions rather than dwelling on one, use the sociological concept of patriarchy precisely, and end with a clear, nuanced verdict rather than sitting on the fence.
How to approach it
Begin by defining patriarchy as a system of male dominance and by clarifying what it would mean for a religion to be patriarchal — in its authority structures, texts, imagery and moral codes.
Then present the substantial evidence that the major world religions have been patriarchal, drawing examples from several traditions: male priesthoods and prophets, texts and doctrines subordinating women, and the exclusion of women from religious authority. Next, complicate the picture: goddess and feminine-divine traditions, egalitarian teachings, women's religious agency, and internal reform and feminist theology. Our notes on sociological theories of religion frame religion's social functions, including its role in legitimating gender orders.
Conclude with a balanced verdict: the dominant historical and institutional tendency has indeed been patriarchal, but "all religions are wholly and necessarily patriarchal" overstates the case, since traditions are internally plural and contested.
Model answer
Patriarchy denotes a social system in which men hold predominant power and authority and women are structurally subordinated. To ask whether religions are patriarchal is to ask whether their institutions, texts, imagery and moral codes systematically privilege men and confine women. Approached sociologically — with religion understood as a social institution deeply bound up with power — the evidence points to a strong but not unqualified affirmative.
The case that world religions have been patriarchal is substantial and cross-cultural. Religious authority has overwhelmingly been male: the priesthood in Catholic Christianity and the traditional Hindu temple priesthood are reserved for men, the ulama and imams leading prayer in Islam are typically male, and the great founders and prophets across traditions are men. Sacred texts and doctrines have frequently encoded female subordination — narratives casting woman as derived from or as tempter of man, rules governing women's dress, seclusion and ritual purity, and inheritance or testimony provisions that value women unequally. Practices reinforce the pattern: menstrual taboos excluding women from temples and rituals in several Hindu and other traditions, restrictions on women's leadership, and the long association of the feminine with pollution or moral danger. Feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir argued that religion has served as a powerful ideological support for women's subordinate status, and Nawal El Saadawi documented how religious authority has been mobilised to control women's bodies and lives. Sociologically, one can read this through religion's capacity to sacralise the existing social order, lending divine legitimacy to male dominance.
Yet the claim that all religions are patriarchal, without remainder, is harder to sustain, and several considerations complicate it. First, many traditions contain powerful female-divine elements: Hinduism venerates goddesses such as Durga, Kali and Lakshmi as active, potent deities, and older strata of religious history include goddess and mother-cult traditions. Second, egalitarian and reforming currents exist within traditions: strands of Bhakti and Sufi devotion opened spiritual life to women and the low-born, Sikhism's teaching affirms the equal spiritual worth of women, and Buddhism admitted an order of nuns. Third, women have exercised real religious agency as mystics, saints, reformers and, in some traditions, priests and preachers, rather than being wholly passive. Fourth, religions are not frozen: feminist theology, the ordination of women in several Protestant and other denominations, and reform movements from within have contested and revised patriarchal readings, showing that patriarchy is a dominant tendency rather than an immutable essence.
The balanced verdict, then, is this. Judged by their historical institutional forms and their dominant textual and interpretive traditions, the major world religions have overwhelmingly been patriarchal, and this is one of the more robust generalisations in the sociology of gender and religion. But religions are internally plural, historically dynamic and open to contestation; they contain egalitarian resources, feminine-divine imagery and reforming movements alongside their patriarchal mainstream. To answer "yes, entirely and by necessity" would flatten this complexity, while a flat "no" would ignore an unmistakable pattern. The accurate sociological answer is that patriarchy has been the prevailing tendency across world religions, but not a total or unchangeable one.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is testing whether you can handle a deliberately absolute question with nuance and evidence. A one-word thesis, defended by examples from a single religion, cannot score highly; nor can a vague survey that never defines patriarchy or reaches a verdict.
Strong scripts define patriarchy sociologically, marshal examples across several traditions on both sides of the ledger, and treat religion as an internally contested institution rather than a monolith. The decisive quality is judgement: recognising the dominant patriarchal tendency while qualifying the word all, and closing with a clear, defensible position supported by the evidence just presented.