E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.2 page 9 having the same religious heritage. Also, practices based on or imputed to different religions and prevalent in some cultures are simply inadmissible in others. By contrast, cultural practices that are injurious to women can sometimes be at variance with religion or conflict with its prescriptions or spirit and, as will be seen, exacerbate women’s status in relation to specific provisions of religious law, such as deprivation of the right to inherit landed property, forced marriage, etc. In other cases, the State may adopt laws and policies favourable to the status of women but deeply entrenched social and cultural patterns are difficult to change and can hamper the implementation of a socially advanced, affirmative State policy. 21. The overall picture is highly uneven and one is struck by the broad spectrum of legal situations in countries sharing the same religion. The relationship between women’s status and cultural and religious traditions is a sensitive area that can lead to a lack of understanding or to tensions among peoples or human groups. This problem arises less in some societies owing to the effects of education, developments in moral standards, family dispersal and industrialization.22 22. It must, however, be acknowledged that, in general terms, the history of religions has, like the history of the world, been largely viewed and written from a male perspective.23 Religious traditions often created a gender-based division of roles and responsibilities in the different areas of family and social life. Yet some of those harmful practices have stood the test of time and, with or without the aid of religion and religious practitioners, have reached us across the centuries and continents. Traditions are sometimes stronger than laws, whether the latter are codified by humans or even when they are ordained by God. 23. That unquestionably demonstrates the force of traditions but also shows the difficulty involved in pursuing action aimed at overcoming religious traditions that impair women’s status. Paradoxically, it may seem that it is women themselves who, although victims of many cultural traditions, play a not insignificant role in perpetuating those practices.24 24. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between culture and religion and say whether a practice or norm or a negative view of women within the family or in society is purely culturally or socioculturally based or founded on custom alone. In many societies, including industrialized societies, the image of women within the dominant culture is not without a certain religious heritage, which may possibly not manifest itself as such but is transmitted and diffused into a society’s ancient collective consciousness and has not entirely disappeared with the development or secularization of society and the State. C. Universality of women’s rights and cultural diversity 25. When used to account for obstacles to modernity and to the universality of human rights, the term “culture” in that context has a negative connotation. Culture is thus linked with relativism as a phenomenon that undermines the universalism of human rights and, in particular, of women’s rights. However, not all cultural and religious practices and values are negative or detrimental to women’s health or status. Some should be maintained and fostered. That applies to certain traditional medical or marriage practices.25 It is also true of female values such as community spirit, mutual assistance, sense of family unity, care and respect for elders, etc. Traditional cultures, especially in Africa, also transmit community values which, inter alia, make it possible to safeguard children from prostitution.26