Womens status in Islam

[binthaamid]

Salaam,

Firstly, I just want to be clear that I really love my faith and it's helped me greatly in many ways, but I have something which I'm confused/curious about. It's just that I understand women have equality and are respected but I'm unable to understand why in some cases women are somewhat deemed at a lesser status than men (not well explained sorry, I just don't want to be disrespectful). For e.g. I understand to a certain degree why women get half the inheritance that of men and why men can only lead salah but what I don't understand is:

>why does there need to be two women as witnesses whereas one male
in most cases eg. Nikaah

 

[zariya]

"And get two witnesses of your own men, and if there are not two men then a man and two women such as you choose for witnesses - so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her ... "
— Al-Qur'an 2:182
A number of questions are raised when this section of the passage is read. The questions often posed include:
Do women have weaker memories than men?
Why should two women be needed in the place of one man?
Are women inferior to men?
One must remember that Prophet Muhammad
sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam was neither a physiologist, a psychiatrist and nor a surgeon. He was an illiterate and could neither read nor write. He passed on the revelation exactly as he received it. Allah, the Creator , with His infinite wisdom gave the directives best suited to humankind. He is the Creator, therefore, He knows man better than a man himself.
In this scientific age we can explore the significance of this legislation. A great deal has been discovered since the early days of Islam. And each day of advancement brings about a better understanding of the the last and final revelation from the Creator, Allah to the creation, humankind. As women, we are aware of the cyclical psychological strains that a woman has to encounter every month. The symptoms during early pregnancy, ante-natal and post-natal depressions, the phenomenon of menopause, the physiological and psychological problems due to infertility and last but not least the psychological problems faced after miscarriage.
It is under these situations that women can experience extraordinary psychological strains giving rise to depression, lack of concentration, slow-mindedness and short term memory loss. Let us examine these episodes in a bit more detail and with medical references from the scientific world. PMT is an umbrella term for more than 140 different symptoms and there is a lot of evidence that it causes a lot of unhappiness in many women, and consequently, to their families.