This is an extract from the article 'Unjust to Women' by Irfan Husain, which appeared in today Dawn newspaper. I think it would be of interest to many Muslims here:

"A year or so ago, I received an email from a woman in the US with a Muslim name. She wrote that she was 24, and asked why she should remain a Muslim, given the low status she saw in the scriptures accorded to her gender. Normally, I never enter into a discussion about somebody’s faith, or the lack of it. I just don’t think it’s any of my business.

But as she had asked me a specific question, I replied that for its time, the Holy Quran signified a huge step forward for women as it gave them rights no other religion or society had even conceived of at that point in history. She replied that this was all very well, but I was talking about a stage 1,400 years ago, and the world had moved on since then. Women in non-Muslim societies now enjoyed far more rights than their Muslim sisters, so why should she follow a faith that made her inferior to men?

I had no easy answer, and our correspondence ended on this note. The truth is that for many Muslim women today, several Islamic provisions regarding the laws of evidence and inheritance do appear to disadvantage them. And as they give men authority over women, the former are naturally reluctant to contemplate a change in this set-up. Indeed, the entire social order is tilted in favour of men, and when one community or sex wishes to redress the power balance, an intense struggle takes place. This happened in the West over the last century, as women fought for, and won, equal rights. But although western women are equal under the law, pockets of discrimination and gender bias remain."

http://www.dawn.com.pk/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm