E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.2 page 8 16. From a static perspective there is no doubt that religions can encourage or obstruct female emancipation. But the process of women’s liberation overall appears less bound up with the content of holy texts or religions in general than with women’s social and economic development or with how patriarchal, oppressive or advanced a society is. That should explain the varying—sometimes widely varying—status of women in societies which share the same religious beliefs and hence the existence—from the standpoint of women’s official status—not of a single but of several cultural interpretations of religious texts. 17. The role of culture is thus key to explaining the discrimination suffered by women at the hands of religion. Used in varying contexts and for different ends, culture can broadly be defined as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.17 Culture may thus be regarded as encompassing religion but would appear more to foster a way of behaving, i.e. human beings’ fulfilment of a sometimes conscious but often unconscious role in their progress through history in order to shape that progress in line with their requirements, environment, values, constraints, fears, etc.18 18. Equally, there is no religion pure and simple. All religions influence and are influenced by human action, and historical, cultural, etc. experiences form part of the very definition of religions or at least of religious practices. A significant number of rituals, myths, procedures and institutions have arisen not from religious beliefs as revealed or as existing in their raw and original state but from the way in which those beliefs have been shaped by human action, i.e. by culture. Religious attitudes and practices may be defined differently from one society to another and within the same society according to ethnic group, class, caste or sect. Also, in all societies, religion bears the distinctive mark of the regional culture and the traditions which preceded it or were subsequently absorbed by it. Every religion necessarily remains imprinted in a cultural setting, just as each culture necessarily has a religious dimension. From a dynamic perspective, religion has no option but to assimilate its historical and cultural dimension. It would therefore seem difficult, at least in some cases, to separate religion from culture or from custom and tradition since, to some extent, religion is also a tradition, custom or legacy handed down. Also culture is a composite of ways of living and thinking, rituals and myths passed on by parents and handed down by ancestors.19 19. In cases where constitutions declare the religion of the State,20 or in societies where religion occupies an important hegemonic position in the daily lives of individuals and groups, the entire status of women within the family and in society is at issue. It is sometimes difficult to separate cultural traditions from actual religion. Religion does not stop at holy texts. As rightly observed by one author, texts expand or shrink on contact with cultural imagination.21 Women’s status, for example, varies from one Muslim country to another and from one culture to another. Within the same faith, women may under some extremist regimes be deprived of all rights, just as in traditionalist countries they may be confined or relegated to an inferior position or so perceived, to varying degrees, in other countries. 20. However, in comparison with the religion-based archetype of women’s status, custom and culture can generally speaking have, depending on the circumstances, less restricting effects, which are often fostered by affirmative action of the State. For example, some Muslim societies may be tolerant of the wearing of the veil, encourage monogamy or ban polygamy and grant women rights within the family and in society that would be inconceivable in other societies