What does the Quran say about women?

Many people meet the Quran’s teaching on women through two or three contested verses. Read as a whole, the Quran speaks of women as full moral persons. It says women and men were created from a single soul, promises them the same reward for the same deeds, answers women’s questions by revelation, and calls believing men and women protecting friends of one another. Equality in creation, faith, and reward is the ground on which every other verse about women stands, and it is the reason Muslim women and men have found in the Quran the root of the equality of the sexes.

Does the Quran say women and men are equal?

The Quran’s account of humanity begins with one soul:

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ ٱتَّقُواْ رَبَّكُمُ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَكُم مِّن نَّفۡسٖ وَٰحِدَةٖ وَخَلَقَ مِنۡهَا زَوۡجَهَا وَبَثَّ مِنۡهُمَا رِجَالٗا كَثِيرٗا وَنِسَآءٗ

“People, be mindful of your Lord, who created you from a single soul, created its mate from it, and from the two of them spread many men and women across the earth.”

Quran 4:1

The word for soul, nafs (نفس), is grammatically feminine, and the verse gives neither sex priority over the other. The Quran also tells the story of the Garden without the blame that many retellings place on Eve. Adam and his wife eat from the tree together and repent together (7:22–23), and the one verse that names a single person who disobeyed names Adam (20:121).

Worth before Allah has one measure in the Quran, and it is open to everyone: “The noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most mindful of Him” (49:13). The Prophet ﷺ put the same principle in a single sentence. When Umm Sulaym asked him whether a ruling on ritual washing applied to women as well, he answered:

«نَعَمْ إِنَّمَا النِّسَاءُ شَقَائِقُ الرِّجَالِ»

“Yes. Women are the counterparts of men.”

Sunan Abi Dawud 236

Al-Albani graded the hadith hasan. The word shaqāʾiq (شقائق) describes the two halves of something split down the middle: equal parts of one whole.

Does the Quran speak to women directly?

It does, and some of its verses came down because women asked. Umm Salama (may Allah be pleased with her), one of the first women to emigrate to Medina, said to the Prophet ﷺ: “Messenger of Allah, I do not hear Allah mention women in the emigration.” Allah answered her (Jami’ al-Tirmidhi 3023, graded sahih by al-Albani):

فَٱسۡتَجَابَ لَهُمۡ رَبُّهُمۡ أَنِّي لَآ أُضِيعُ عَمَلَ عَٰمِلٖ مِّنكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ أَوۡ أُنثَىٰۖ بَعۡضُكُم مِّنۢ بَعۡضٖ

“Their Lord answered them: I will not let the deed of any one of you go to waste, whether male or female. You are of one another.”

Quran 3:195

Umm ʿUmāra al-Anṣāriyya, the Companion Nusayba bint Kaʿb who later shielded the Prophet ﷺ at the battle of Uḥud, brought a similar complaint: “I see that everything is for the men, and I do not see women mentioned in anything.” The verse that followed names women alongside men ten times over (Jami’ al-Tirmidhi 3211):

إِنَّ ٱلۡمُسۡلِمِينَ وَٱلۡمُسۡلِمَٰتِ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنَٰتِ … وَٱلذَّـٰكِرِينَ ٱللَّهَ كَثِيرٗا وَٱلذَّـٰكِرَٰتِ أَعَدَّ ٱللَّهُ لَهُم مَّغۡفِرَةٗ وَأَجۡرًا عَظِيمٗا

“Muslim men and Muslim women, believing men and believing women … men who remember Allah often and women who remember Him: for all of them Allah has prepared forgiveness and a great reward.”

Quran 33:35

Between those lines the verse pairs men and women in devotion, truthfulness, patience, humility, charity, fasting, and chastity. No virtue in the list belongs to one sex alone.

Another verse calls believing men and believing women “protecting friends (awliyāʾ) of one another” who together “enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, establish prayer, and give zakat” (Quran 9:71). The charge of guiding the community is given to women in the same words as to men.

Which women does the Quran honor?

Mary (peace be upon her) is the only woman the Quran names. A whole sūra bears her name, and the angels tell her that Allah has chosen her above the women of all the worlds (3:42); her story is told in What does the Quran say about Mary?. The mother of Moses receives Allah’s inspiration and trusts her baby to the river (28:7). The Queen of Sheba consults her council, weighs Solomon’s message with care, and submits “with Solomon to Allah, Lord of the worlds” (27:44). The wife of Pharaoh is held up as the example for all who believe, men and women alike (66:11).

One sūra is named for an ordinary woman of Medina. Khawla bint Thaʿlaba came to the Prophet ﷺ because her husband had cast her off with an old pagan formula, and she argued her case until revelation came (58:1–4). Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her) said: “All praise belongs to Allah, whose hearing takes in every voice. Khawla came to the Messenger of Allah to complain about her husband, and I could not hear what she said, and Allah sent down: ‘Allah has heard the words of the woman who argues with you about her husband’” (Sunan al-Nasa’i 3460). The sūra is called al-Mujādila, “The Woman Who Argued.”

What rights did the Quran give women?

The Quran changed women’s lives in seventh-century Arabia through law. It condemned the burial of infant girls, picturing the buried girl asked on the Last Day “for what sin she was killed” (81:8–9). It gave women a fixed share of inheritance from parents and relatives, “whether little or much” (Quran 4:7). Their earnings are their own: “Men have a share of what they earn, and women have a share of what they earn” (4:32). The marriage gift (mahr) belongs to the bride herself (4:4), and the Quran forbade taking possession of women against their will (4:19).

These verses set a floor, and the Quran’s direction points beyond it. Why the classical shares took the form they did, and how families today honor the Quran’s justice, is explained in Why do women inherit half in Islam?

How should the harder verses be read?

A few verses speak of men’s responsibility for women (4:34) or of men having “a degree” in matters of divorce (2:228). The scholars have read them in many ways. Amina Wadud, in Qur’an and Woman (first published in Malaysia in 1992 and by Oxford University Press in 1999), ties the responsibility in 4:34 to the duty of financial support that the verse itself names, and measures every such verse against the Quran’s principles of equal creation and justice. Asma Barlas, in “Believing Women” in Islam (2002), argues that patriarchal readings came from interpreters and their societies, while the text treats women and men as moral equals.

Two of the most debated verses, on striking (4:34) and on women’s testimony (2:282), are taken up in Does the Quran allow a husband to hit his wife? and Is a woman’s testimony worth half a man’s?. Modesty in the Quran is addressed to men first (24:30) and then to women (24:31); how it applies to dress is discussed in Is hijab mandatory in Islam?

A woman’s prayer for every believer

The Quran’s example of faith under pressure is a woman’s prayer. Living in the palace of the most powerful tyrant of her age, the wife of Pharaoh asked Allah for a home of her own:

رَبِّ ٱبۡنِ لِي عِندَكَ بَيۡتٗا فِي ٱلۡجَنَّةِ

“My Lord, build me a house near You in the Garden.”

Quran 66:11

Allah gave her words to every believer as an example. May He grant every daughter and son of Adam a home near Him, and the justice and tenderness He commands between them here.