How Religion Influences Gender Roles Peer Reviewed Articles
1For reasons which merit dissever assay, the Sociology of Religion has lagged behind many other fields in taking gender seriously. Whilst small-scale, ethnographic studies accept been most probable to recognise the significance of gender, ascendant theoretical frameworks inside the Folklore of Religion often remain gender-blind. Although there has been some debate about why women, in the Due west at least, are more religious than men, [1] this has largely taken place in isolation from what are still considered to be the 'big' issues in the sociological analysis of faith, most notably issues concerning the growth and refuse of religion in modern societies.
2This inattention to gender contrasts with the liveliness of gender studies within the academy in contempo decades. Every bit I will illustrate in this article, in that location accept been a number of significant sociological contributions to the study of religion and gender in contempo decades, which take even so failed to make a significant impact upon the wider field of gender studies. [2] Even within the Sociology of Religion itself, those who appoint with gender issues have failed to convince many of their colleagues that such a move is not an optional extra or an interesting specialisation, just an essential corrective to the gender-blindness which has, until now, restricted the discipline's field of vision. The argument even so has to exist won that removal of these blinkers has consequences for the entire discipline – its methods, its theories, its disquisitional tools and concepts, its focus, its areas of concentration, its specialisations, its hierarchies, its institutional forms and material practices.
3One issue of this patchy and partial interaction is that in that location is as even so no agreed 'syllabus' in the sociological written report of religion and gender, no tried and tested manner of approaching the subject, no theory or theories of faith and gender. Of necessity then, this article cannot merely summarise the 'state of the art' and suggest how it can or should develop in the hereafter – information technology must also try to fill in some of the gaps. Information technology will approach this chore, first, by sketching a theoretical framework for understanding faith and gender, and so past substantiating the theory by reference to some key studies of aspects of religion and gender. Next, the significance of gender for the sociological study of organized religion will be illustrated in relation to classic theories of secularization. The commodity will terminate with a brief sketch of additional areas in which attention to gender has the potential to disrupt and reform agendas in the sociological study of religion.
Starting Points for a Theory of Gender and Faith
4A theoretical business relationship of the relations betwixt organized religion and gender requires an acknowledgement that both serve to represent, embody and distribute power within society, plus an account of how these two systems of distribution may relate to one another.
5If gender is a complex and interlocking ready of power relations constituted in the historical process (Bourdieu, 2001), then it is possible to speak of the 'gender order' of a club, despite the impossibility of e'er disentangling the full complexities of this order. Faith non only takes its place within this order, it is a constitutive part of it, though it may play a range of dissimilar roles and occupy a number of different positions.
6Religion's constitutive contribution to power relations within club is best understood past viewing religion itself as a system of power. As I have argued in relation to Christianity (Woodhead, 2004), faith is the social expression of engagement with a source of power which is unique to organized religion ('sacred power'), merely religion also involves interaction with 'secular' sources of power, both social (cultural, political, economic, armed forces) and socio-personal (emotional, concrete, intellectual, aesthetic). Although it tin take independent forcefulness, the potency of sacred power is enhanced through alignment with secular power (e.one thousand. there is a close historical relationship between the power of the Christian God and the wealth and political influence of the church, or between the success of 'holistic' therapies and their ability to enhance emotional wellbeing). At that place are many possible permutations of sacred and secular ability, many different ways in which they can reinforce or repudiate one another. To view organized religion merely every bit a benign 'sacred awning' over society (Berger, 1967) is to ignore the ways in which religion(s) tin and do play active roles in: reinforcing and legitimating dominant ability interests; generating resistance to ascendant power; resourcing groups with little social power; resourcing reconfigurations of power. A group which has a great bargain of social power may telephone call on sacred power to heighten, extend, legitimate and normalise that ability (for example, the Frankish dynasty in medieval Europe, or George Westward. Bush'due south Republican Party in the U.s.). Conversely, a group which has niggling social power can depict on sacred power to improve its access to secular power in a way which would not otherwise exist possible (for example, early Christian communities in the 2nd and third centuries, women-dominated holistic self-spiritualities today, see Heelas and Woodhead, 2005).
Theorising Religion and Gender
7Once ability is highlighted, information technology is piece of cake to meet how organized religion and gender tin and practice interact. Past way of symbolic and cloth practices religion tin can reinforce existing gendered distributions of ability or endeavor to change them. At whatsoever ane time a religion will exist in a item structural relation to the gender order of the society of which information technology is office. Just the existing relationship is just a snapshot in an on-going dynamic that is shaped by many factors, including the faith'south own gender strategy. Given that gendered distributions of power are integral to the wider inequalities of social power which define all known societies, this gives united states of america two main variables to consider. 1, the way in which religion is situated in relation to existing distributions of secular power: religion's situation in relation to gender. Ii, the way in which faith is mobilized in relation to existing distributions of secular power: religion's strategy in relation to gender.
8Expressing this diagrammatically, we can draw a vertical axis which runs from 'mainstream' to 'marginal' religion and a horizontal centrality which starts with religion as 'confirmatory' and moves to religion as 'challenging'. 'Mainstream' religion is integral to the existing distribution of power in society and socially respectable. 'Marginal' organized religion sits at more than of an bending to the social and gender order, and will therefore be treated as socially deviant by those who accept the dominant distribution of power. 'Confirmatory' religion seeks to legitimate, reinforce, and sacralise the existing distribution of power in order, particularly the existing gender social club, whilst 'challenging' religion seeks to improve, resist or alter this order. The two axes requite united states four 'cells', which represent the four master ways in which organized religion (as a distribution of power) may relate to gender (as a distribution of power) – and hence 4 main 'types' of religion in relation to gender.
9First, religion tin be integral to the existing gender order, and tin serve to reproduce and legitimate gender inequality for those who exercise the faith and those who fall inside its penumbra ('consolidating'). Second, religion tin can exist integral to the existing gender order, only can be used to give admission to power from 'within' and employ information technology in ways which may be subversive of the existing gender society ('tactical'). Third, faith may exist marginal to the existing gendered distribution of ability, but used equally a ways of access to that power from the outside, without necessarily intending to disrupt the distribution of that power ('questing'). Finally, organized religion may be situated in a marginal relation to the gendered distribution of power, and may be used to attempt to competition, disrupt and redistribute that distribution ('counter-cultural').
Fig. 1
Religion's positioning in relation to gender
Religion'due south positioning in relation to gender
10This typology does not assume that there is necessarily a static single 'gender order' in a society, for the unit of measurement of assay may vary from a nation-state to a region or ethnic group. It is, however, causeless that within such a unit in that location volition at any one fourth dimension be a prevailing distribution of ability betwixt genders which tin can be labelled 'mainstream', and alternatives to information technology which are currently 'marginal'. In near known societies the mainstream distribution has been 1 which has favoured men over women. However, the nature of that unequal distribution varies considerably over time and identify, and in some societies – as, for example, in many contemporary western societies – gender relations may be in a land of considerable flux, such that mainstream position(s) are relatively precarious. Neither does this typology presume that there is necessarily a dominant religious guild within a club, or that all members of a religion will assume identical positions in relation to gender. Thus, for example, within a single Christian congregation or denomination the religious activities of some members may 'consolidate' the existing gender order (those who do not question the 'sanctified' version of masculine domination which is presented in official church teachings, institutional arrangements and liturgical practice, for example), whilst the religious activities of others may fall into the 'tactical' category (for example, women who ignore a good deal of official church teaching, create groups in church for women'due south mutual back up, and utilize these groups to merits both sacred and political power, see Winter, Lummis and Stokes, 1995), whilst all the same others may be 'questing' (for instance, those who use churches sporadically, and sometimes enter them merely to enjoy the sacred space and use it for their own personal and spiritual purposes which practice not, however, disrupt the status quo).
11This typology directs attention not only to gender orders in social club, simply also to the gender gild(s) inherent in a religion or religious group. Faith's implications in a gendered distribution of ability cannot simply be read off from its cultural symbols, important though these are. Fifty-fifty representations of the sacred practice not necessarily have a one-to-one relationship with gender society. We tin can recollect of such representations as running along a spectrum of possibilities, from those which identify sacred power with a supernatural being or beings and their authorised representatives ('priests') on the one manus, to those which identify the sacred with life itself, and thus with the inner 'spiritual' cadre of each and every living beingness on the other (Woodhead and Heelas, 2000). In the former 'religions of divergence', sacred power is tightly concentrated and controlled, whereas in the latter 'spiritualities of life' it is more diffuse and attainable. Conspicuously the former has a natural affinity with forms of social and religious organization in which power is hierarchically distributed, with the few ruling over the many, whilst the latter has a closer fit with flatter, more egalitarian distributions of power. Given the pervasive social norm of male dominance, it is non surprising to notice that religions of divergence – particularly monotheistic ones – tend to identify concentrated sacred power with masculinity. Thus in the example of a hierarchical, male-dominated order, nosotros might await to find a hierarchical, monotheistic religion which sacralises male ability, in a 'consolidating' relationship with the prevailing gender club. Likewise, nosotros might expect a 'counter-cultural' religion which opposes masculine domination to reject a male deity in favour of a female person deity, polytheism, pantheism, or a more amorphous mysticism – all of which bring sacred power into closer relation with women. Equally a number of the studies reviewed beneath signal, nevertheless, relationships between representation and social enactment should exist explored rather than assumed, for in exercise a range of possible and sometimes surprising relationships are possible.
Studies of Religion and Gender
Consolidating
12Religion's central part in consolidating gender difference and inequality was recognised, explored and critiqued by nineteenth-century feminists similar Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her revising committee in The Woman's Bible (1985 [orig. 1895-1898]). This tradition of feminist critique was revived with second-wave feminism and lives on into the present 24-hour interval in the piece of work of influential feminist writers like Mary Daly. Although its focus falls on historic texts rather than present realities, this intellectual trajectory has influenced many subsequently attempts to approach the topic of religion and gender from a more sociological point of view. And then too have historical studies of the consolidating relations between religious and gender inequality in a range of contexts: from early Christianity and Judaism (e.thou. Kraemer and D'Angelo, 1990; Elm, 1994), through the medieval period (e.m. Bynum, 1987, 1991), to early mod (e.thousand. Davidoff and Hall, 2002) and industrial society (east.thousand. Ginzberg, 1990; Brown, 2000; Summers, 2000).
13In a more fully sociological fashion, the standing link between religion and gender inequality has been demonstrated on a world scale by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris' (2003) analysis of the Globe Values and European Values Surveys carried out between 1995-2001. The study finds that levels of gender equality beyond different countries are related not only to economic growth and legal-institutional reforms, but to cultural factors – higher up all, religiosity. Thus cross-sectional differences in support for gender equality vary even between societies at similar levels of development, and depend upon caste of religiosity and the blazon of religious values. Inglehart and Norris conclude that, 'religion matters, not merely for cultural attitudes but for the opportunities and constraints on women'southward lives, such as the ratio of females to males in educational enrolment, the female adult literacy rate, the employ of contraception, and the UNDP Gender-Related Evolution Alphabetize, also every bit for opportunities for women in the paid workforce and in parliamentary representation' (2003: 69). This is not, however, a question of religious men but imposing religious attitudes upon women, for traditional sexual values tend to be shared by both sexes in the same type of society, and women tend to brandish college levels of religiosity than men (greatly in industrial social club, somewhat in post-industrial society, less in agrarian order, 2003: 58).
14Although intensifying secularization is positively correlated with growing gender equality, religion's continuing power to consolidate gender inequality remains evident in postal service industrial societies in the West. If anything, this role seems to accept become more prominent in the religious sphere as acceptance of the goal of gender equality becomes more than widespread in club as a whole (Woodhead, 2006a). Thus the 2d half of the twentieth century has seen of import moves inside Christianity, Judaism and Islam to consolidate identity effectually a defense of 'traditional' roles for men and women which involve male headship and female domesticity. Although this tendency is evident across the spectrum of religious commitment – from the more moderate to the more traditionalist – in the quondam it may exist a function of standing however whilst cultural and sexual values liberalize, whilst in the latter there is a more agile drive to consolidate highly differentiated and unequal gender roles. DeBerg (1990) and Bendroth (1993) assuredly demonstrate that hostility to changing gender roles and the rise of feminism was a primal factor in the ascent of Christian fundamentalism in the USA, and that consolidation of 'traditional' gender roles is as essential and defining a component of fundamentalism equally conventionalities in God and theological ideas (Brasher, 1998: xi).
15Sociological studies of 'consolidating' forms of conservative faith have been preoccupied with the issue of why women affiliate with groups which sacralise gender departure and inequality. Lynn Davidman's (1991) study of women affiliating to Orthodox Judaism in the USA suggests that women are attracted because of, rather than in spite of, the traditional gender roles on offer: what attracts women is the style in which such religion offers a clear alternative to the confusing and contradictory roles open up to women in late modern club. In particular, the role of wife and female parent inside a nuclear family unit appeals, and women in bourgeois religions are happy to make this their primary identity, rather than being caught in a confusion of domestic and professional roles (even when they continue in paid work). What becomes allegorical for Davidman's women is the (idealised) experience of the warm, close, family gathering around the Shabbat table, with candles, nutrient, common dear and back up (1991: 116-120).
16But it is not just the sacred female person role which tin can prove attractive to women who affiliate with bourgeois, consolidating forms of religion – and then too can the sacred male role. Davidman's data suggests that women are attracted by the whole package of nuclear familial domesticity which is advocated by contemporary forms of Orthodox Judaism, including the thought of a husband who will be a companionate protector-provider and protect women from the dangers posed past family unit breakdown. This also can exist seen equally a reaction against prevailing gender norms, in particular against contempo modes of masculinity which de-emphasise paternal responsibility (what Ehrenreich (1983) characterises equally the 'flight from commitment'), or which legitimate male person violence (Dworkin (1983) explains women'southward flight to fundamentalism every bit motivated by a futile desire to seek male protection against male violence). In the context of developing countries in the southern hemisphere Martin (1988) notes that women's attraction to Pentecostal Christianity has much to do with the benefits that accumulate to them and their children from a stable household unit with a committed male parent whose conversion to Christianity also involves conversion from machismo. Shifting the annals more than clearly from the real to the ideal, Clark-King (2004) finds Christianity in the northwest of England providing working-class women with an idealised provider-protector figure in God the Male parent, and an idealised hubby/lover in Jesus Christ.
17The ways in which religion and hegemonic masculinities consolidate ane another remains relatively ill-explored, with the majority of sociological studies of faith and gender focusing on 'marked' femininity rather than 'unmarked' masculinity. This is get-go to change equally masculinity becomes more prominent in gender studies (e.g. Connell, 1995; Kimmel and Messner, 1998), and as the active role of religion in the construction and consolidation of masculinity becomes more evident. Movements like Promise Keepers and events like the 1000000 Man March in the USA have helped provoke scholarly awareness of the importance of conservative Christianity in consolidating certain patriarchal modes of masculinity, near notably a paternalistic office. This is not simply a repristination of a 'traditional' mode of Christian patriarchy, since it gives emphasis to new 'expressive' and relational imperatives which are said to be binding on men as well as women (Williams, 2000), but information technology is certainly a rallying cry to reclaim a man's divine right to rule over his family and to expect his wife and children to serve and obey him, not least by mode of unpaid labour in the household (Eldén, 2002). Such developments take place confronting a groundwork which has seen a shift from what Walby (1990) calls the 'private patriarchy' which held sway in avant-garde industrial societies of right through to the 1950s towards a 'public patriarchy' (see below). The former, which operates an exclusionary patriarchal strategy and relies on 'household production as the main site of women's oppression' (1990: 24), has been consolidated historically by religions like Christianity and Judaism. Fundamentalist religion beyond the globe retains loyalty to private patriarchy in the gimmicky context, whilst beingness willing to brand some accommodation to the shift towards a public patriarchy in which women's labour is exploited across a wider range of sites, including the paid workforce. The corresponding shifts and accommodations made past 'mainstream' and more liberal forms of religion remain to be studied.
Tactical
18Whereas consolidating forms of faith take, reinforce and sacralise the dominant gender order – and vice versa – tactical forms work within such orders but push button across them. In Kandiyoti's (1988) terms, they 'bargain with patriarchy', accepting prevailing patterns of meaning and power-distribution, only maximising their advantage for those who are disadvantaged past them. They tin never fatally undermine the prevailing distribution of power, for to do and then would exist to undermine the source of ability to which they seek greater access. Since such a stance is most likely to emerge within a religious group rather than to give rise to a faith equally such, information technology may be more accurate to speak of a tactical trajectory within religion, rather than a tactical blazon. For obvious reasons, it is those who are disempowered by the prevailing gender order – usually women – who are well-nigh likely to exist involved in such a trajectory.
19Two recent studies of women in conservative Christian congregations and networks in the U.s. religions reveal the continuing importance of tactical organized religion. In her research in two conservative mega-churches, Brasher (1998) discovers that their appeal to women – who make up about fifty per cent of the congregations – does not lie primarily in the large weekly Lord's day worship service led by male pastors which scholars take traditionally assumed to be the central ritual and social event of congregational life. Rather, women have created what is in many respects a parallel religious association, in which small women-only groups which meet on a regular weekly or more-than-weekly basis form the basic social unit of measurement. Such 'female person enclaves' (1998: five) fall under the oversight of women responsible for women'southward ministry, and have considerable autonomy. Whilst their explicit focus is often effectually Bible study, their characteristic activities do not resemble 'traditional' Bible studies in which an authorised (male) interpreter offers an intellectual commentary upon the scriptures. Rather, activities and interpretations are shaped by women'southward ain agendas, and frequently focus on personal and family problems, providing an opportunity for the exploration, expression, healing and disciplining of emotions. Such groups go life-support systems, in which women mind to, care for, and requite practical support to one another, almost entirely independent of the formal male person-dominated power structures of the church building. In addition, women make use of congregational space to fix a wide variety of boosted, ofttimes very practical, back up structures which provide a diverseness of services including child-intendance and marital back up.
20Griffith'south (1997) study of the evangelical-charismatic 'Women's Aglow' move besides finds that women simultaneously accept the sanctification of female domesticity and male headship, whilst making use of their parallel female religious system to deal with the high costs of their subordination. Similar Brasher she finds women participating in male person-approved discourses and activities, but bending these to their own uses. Women worship a perfect married man and lover, Jesus Christ, whilst struggling to improve and cope with the disappointments and high costs of their actual marital and familial duties. They support ane another every bit they cope with bug with their children, spousal infidelity and cruelty, low cocky-esteem and everyday unhappiness. Like Brasher's parallel female congregational activities, Women's Aglow operates within a territory which is ultimately under male control, but which in do offers women considerable autonomy, and some positions of quite significant public action and authority for leaders within the motion. It seems no coincidence that both examples arise within evangelical-charismatic territory, since charismatic Christianity loosens the ties between sacred power and ecclesiastical part, and makes sacred power in the guise of 'the Spirit' more widely available – to women as well equally men. Nevertheless, such power remains linked to the authorization of Father, Son, husband and pastor. Equally such, it can be appropriated to empower women, just not to overturn the male dominance which it symbolises and supports.
21The tactical trajectory inside more than traditional forms of church building Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, has been less carefully investigated – at least in the twentieth and xx-first centuries. All the same, a cluster of pioneering studies of women in late nineteenth-century Britain and America demonstrates the importance of tactical religion at the origins of mod feminism. Studies like Welter (1976), Rendall (1985), Banks (1986), Morgan (1999) and Mumm (1999) bear witness that although churches in industrial society played a central role in the consolidation of a rigid gender sectionalisation and a doctrine of 'dissever spheres', organized religion also provided middle form women with ideological and practical means to gainsay coercive forms of male power (by reference to scriptural injunctions, and past way of temperance movements), to enter into the civil and public spheres (through charitable, mission and temperance work), and to extend domestic roles, like maternal care, into more than public duties. The massive expansion of Catholic female religious orders, ofttimes dedicated to a profession such as teaching, nursing or mission, has likewise been investigated in this light (run into, for example, Walsh, 2002). Although the rise of 'secular' feminism and improvements in women'southward legal, political, and economical status have gradually undermined the basis and necessity of many such tactical developments of western religion, a number of minor-scale studies proceed to point to ways in which women apply mainline church building Christianity for purposes ofttimes far removed from the intentions and meanings supplied past an official, male-dominated leadership. Thus Ozorak (1996) finds that a reason male dominance of ecclesiastical power-structures does not necessarily deter female person interest is that the women interviewed practice not seek the same benefits from church adherence as men. Whereas the latter frequently seek institutional role, economic advantage and social upper-case letter, women are more likely to seek the personal and emotional benefits which derive from the supportive relationships they forge in ecclesiastical contexts.
22Clearly tactical religion carves out and flourishes in women-only spaces which gain the protection of male-dominated religion, just escape its firsthand supervision. They can never wholly stride outside the authority of the religion, however, since their existence is ultimately dependent upon it. An interesting case arises when ecclesiastical authorities actively oppose a tactical trajectory, every bit the Roman Cosmic church has washed in relation to its movements for the ordination of women. Although continuing to marry themselves with the same source of sacred ability, such movements may gain independent impetus as a result, and sections may splinter off to form counter-cultural religious movements.
Questing
23Questing forms of religion begin from a position marginal to the dominant gender lodge, but use sacred power in ways which aim at personal (or occasionally group) transformation and movement towards a position of greater advantage inside the existing gender order. The aim is not to modify this order so much equally to improve one's position – and wellbeing – within it.
24Some forms of questing religion seek worldly benefits for the individual or group, the most striking examples being those which involve the use of magic and spells aimed non solely at achieving an enhanced inner emotional or physical state, but some favourable alter in external circumstances. As 1 would expect, given their power disadvantage, women are more likely to make use of sacred ability in this way than men. This is notwithstanding the case in contemporary western societies where there has been a notable revival and popularisation of magic practices, particularly since the 1980s (Partridge, 2004). Such revival has generally taken the course of a revival of interest in witchcraft which, in its more 'magical' manifestations, is increasingly mutual amongst teenagers, especially girls (Berger and Ezzy, 2007). Spells, both invented and scripted in popular books, may be directed at attaining ability over a dearest object, though teenagers who become more seriously involved in witchcraft tend to reject such spells as tampering with another'south will. They are more probable use spells for practical benefits for self or others, including healing and (in Britain rather than the USA) invisibility! Such aims tacitly accept the dominant gender order, whilst seeking to shift the balance of power within information technology, or at least let the thespian to maximise her advantage within it. Other forms of Wicca and neo-paganism more than generally, especially those practised by adults in pocket-size groups and organised networks, are more likely to fall into the counter-cultural category discussed below.
25The most prevalent form of questing organized religion in belatedly industrial societies is that which became known as 'New Historic period' in the 1980s, just which has proliferated since then, and is at present ameliorate referred to as subjective-life spirituality or self-spirituality (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Houtman and Aupers, 2006). Such terms point to a central concern with sacralising and enhancing inner life. At one end of the spectrum of such spirituality prevarication defended ritual groups including those which make upward the neo-infidel movement (meet beneath), but the forms of self-spirituality near likely to autumn into the questing category are those which frequently describe themselves every bit 'holistic', by virtue of their business with 'mind, body and spirit'. Holistic self-spirituality takes a diversity of social forms, ranging from individual reading and practice, to one-to-ane encounters (such as Reiki, and explicitly spiritual forms of homeopathy and aromatherapy) to grouping meetings (such as Yoga, Buddhism, Greenspirit), and larger workshops and festivals. It is increasingly incorporated into workplace trainings, nursing and instruction. Looking at one-to-i and grouping practices in the UK, Heelas and Woodhead (2005) find that a total 80% of those involved, both as practitioners and clients, are female person. Woodhead (2006b) and Houtman and Aupers (2006) offer explanations for this gender imbalance which appeal to the unresolved clash betwixt 'traditional' female roles based effectually domestic labour and the new, more than masculinised roles, which go available to women as they enter the paid workforce in increasing numbers. Cocky-spiritualities address this status past encouraging the structure of new modes of selfhood in which identity is not dictated by social position and expectation, simply discovered from within. Although this project of selfhood may have socially radical implications (see below), it is more probable to render women successful in coping with the contradictions and costs of the unequal distribution of power and unpaid care piece of work in contemporary western societies than in changing in these weather.
26One farther interesting instance of borderline quest religion concerns the men'due south mythopoeic move, which looks to figures like Robert Bly for inspiration (Connell, 1995: 206-211). Although non a straightforwardly religious group, this certainly has elements of a religion. Information technology makes self-conscious utilise of myth and ritual practices to help men engender new forms of inner strength and identity in which they recover the 'lost masculine'. It can exist classified as questing because it is marginal both to the ascendant Judaeo-Christian religious guild and, at least in its own interpretation, to the dominant gender society – since it believes that women's growing social power threatens the position of men.
Counter-cultural
27Religion which is counter-cultural with regard to gender is not only marginal to the existing gender order, but actively opposes it and strives to change information technology and forge alternatives. Here sacred power becomes a fundamental resource in the attempt to establish more than equal distributions of power between the sexes.
28One of the almost influential and virtually studied contemporary examples of such counter-cultural organized religion is what is broadly referred to as the goddess feminist motility. In unlike means and by different means, those involved with this movement seek to honour the 'divine feminine' in their own lives and in society. Although goddess feminism falls into the broad category of subjective-life spirituality discussed above, and into the narrower sub-category of neo-paganism, it differs from much holistic self-spirituality by virtue of its greater emphasis on ritual do and the more cohesive communities which develop effectually such practice, and it qualifies neo-paganism through its concentration on the divine feminine and its commitment to female empowerment. Many goddess feminists are happy to reclaim the title of 'witch', and to describe their religion as 'Wicca'.
29The single most influential figure in goddess feminism is the writer, activist and witch Starhawk, whose most influential book remains The Spiral Trip the light fantastic toe. A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Nifty Goddess (1979). As Salomonsen (2002) argues, both this eminently applied guide to the living of a divinely-empowered life and its author are all-time understood in relation to the Reclaiming community of witches in San Francisco, of which Starhawk is a founding fellow member. Salomonsen's written report of the Reclaiming witches leaves little doubt nigh their counter-cultural stance with regard to gender and power. Although there are male members of the movement, women dominate. There is an explicit commitment not only to gender equality merely to female empowerment. 'Traditional' forms of religion and religious organisation are critiqued from a feminist standpoint, and a self-conscious effort is made to forge new forms of system, practise and communal living which provide a new model not just for religion and personal life, but for society. Ritual practice is cardinal to all these aims. It brings the whole Reclaiming community together at certain points of the twelvemonth for large ritual gatherings, and is key to the life of the autonomous small groups, 'cells', 'circles' or 'covens' of upward to fifteen people which class the building blocks of the Reclaiming community. Both rituals and religious commitment are focused non around transcendent forms of masculinity, but either around personal lives and journeys, or around nature and natural cycles. The effect is not to subordinate the female self to an overarching order of male person-divers dogma, organisation and divinity, only to empower in relation to others and to (sacred) nature.
30Whereas holistic subjective-life spirituality of the questing type is chiefly concerned with inner personal healing and/or transformation, some goddess feminism clearly has, in addition, a more than overtly political calendar. Salomonsen distinguishes between 'utopian' and 'generic' witches. For the latter Wicca has personal reference, whereas for the former, including Starhawk, it is 'a religious and social gospel for the transformation of the world' (2002:97). Utopian goddess feminists may make experiments in alternative living, including establishing new eco-communities, and often play an active part in political protest – as in the protests against the siting of a nuclear power constitute at Diabolo Canyon in California in 1981 which gave ascension to the Reclaiming customs, or at the Greenham Common airbase in England in 1981-1991, in protest confronting nuclear weaponry.
Gendering Secularization
31As the preceding discussion hints, attention to organized religion'southward implication in the ordering and disordering of gender relations is capable of yielding new insights about the process of secularization – and 'sacralization' – in modern contexts.
32Rather than but being evacuated from the modern context, religion is relocated. Although however under the ultimate control of a male begetter God and a male person 'religious professionals' (as they increasingly go), organized religion becomes women'south work, closely associated with the domestic sphere. As both literary critics and historians have documented (Douglas, 1977; Welter, 1976; Ginzberg, 1990), Christianity becomes increasingly feminized during the form of the nineteenth century in many north American and European societies, not merely in terms of its teachings, imagery and gender ideology, but also in terms of its near active constituency. The much-heralded male crisis of organized religion in the Victorian era therefore takes place alongside an upsurge of female piety, with the result that the nineteenth century became not the least but probably the most Christian century of all fourth dimension, non only in terms of cultural influence only also in terms of churchgoing. Viewed in terms of the theoretical framework offered to a higher place, Christianity succeeds both every bit a consolidating and tactical religion. It consolidates past sanctifying women'due south domestic labours, offer a female person identity which dignifies women'south spiritual and moral continuing, erecting class distinctions on the basis of Christian virtue, and reinforcing an ideology of dissever spheres. And it offers tactical means for some women to negotiate not only greater power and protection, but routes into civic and public life (run across to a higher place). [3]
33Precisely because religion became and then implicated within the gender order of industrial modernity, however, it would exist extremely vulnerable to challenges and changes to this order. As Brown (2002) argues, the fact that femininity had get so closely identified with a detail make of nineteenth-century piety meant that the pass up of the former led inevitably to the decline of the latter. Christian femininity was challenged past a range of factors, not least past feminist activeness and sentiment from the late nineteenth century onwards. Nevertheless, Christian ideals of feminine intendance, self-sacrifice, piety, domesticity and spiritual and moral responsibility for husband and family proved resilient in many quarters, both within and outside the churches, so much and then that the 1950s could witness the revival of commitment to 'traditional family values' mentioned in the previous section, and with it a cursory flurry of church growth. Such growth was short-lived, however, and chop-chop followed by the onset of a phase of decline steeper than that which had preceded. This late mod phase of secularization set in during the 1970s and has continued to the present day in most European societies, in Canada, and, to a bottom extent, in the USA (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005: 50-60).
34Although classical theories of secularization are unable to explain the speeding up of secularization afterwards the 1960s, the gendered perspective proposed here would expect the far-reaching shifts in gender relations at the time to accept exactly such a momentous touch on on a organized religion and then closely identified with the gender order of industrial guild. Such shifts include non only the rising of a new feminist calendar committed to equality between the sexes, but – to a higher place all – a combination of political, social and economical changes which lead to women entering the paid workforce in ever-increasing numbers (Wharton, 2005). The simplest way of expressing the consequences for religion would exist to say that women enter the fe cage around a century later than men, but when they do then the corrosive effect on their delivery to faith is like. This is over-simple, however, because even if we ignore the fact that women enter the workplace during a subsequently phase of capitalism, their feel of work is both similar and different from men's experience. Non only do women tend to cluster in different occupations than men, including the caring professions, and to be more likely than men to work part-time, they also proceed to carry out far more unpaid domestic care work than men. The consequences for religion, equally illustrated by the studies discussed earlier in this article, are complex.
35For men, the transition to late modernity has been less traumatic, not only considering they keep to be supported past women'due south traditional work of care, simply because masculinist modes of autonomous, competitive selfhood adapted to the demands of late capitalism accept a long-established social currency. However, insofar as the latter now break from the paternalistic modes of masculinity which dominated the era of paternalistic state and industrial enterprise, and which fitted neatly with church-endorsed modes of modern family unit life, this has besides been corrosive of Christian delivery. With its sacred paternalism and accent on the gentle virtues, Christianity has always has an uneasy relationship with forms of 'hegemonic masculinity' centred around sexual and physical prowess, fabric success, and 'hardness'. The repristination of the latter in contempo times, not only in the form of 'new laddishness', only on a wider socio-economic scale with the sanction of entrepreunerial capitalism, may well be a farther factor in the continuing secularization of many western societies.
Broadening Agendas
36This article has attempted to evidence how a movement abroad from gender-incomprehension profoundly affects the way in which we recall about organized religion and its relation to the social guild, and then much and then that it impacts upon fifty-fifty the most foundational theories within the Sociology of Religion, namely theories of secularization. By the same token, the move from gender-blindness is probable to lead to serious re-examination of foundational concepts within the field, including the concept of 'religion' itself.
37Although enshrined in the very name of the field of study, the concept of religion has received less critical exam in the Sociology of Religion than in Religious Studies, Psychology of Faith and Anthropology.
38The tendency to render male exercise normative in understandings of what counts as religious is evident in deep sociological assumptions about what counts as sacred, every bit ritual, equally scripture, as conventionalities, every bit religious practice, as a religious professional, a religious organisation, and and then on. Studies of religion by social historians which widen their focus to include women's activities often take in a much broader range of phenomena than fall within the purview of established sociological theorising and research (see for example Williams' (1999) study of religion in Southwark). Detailed qualitative research is also extending our understanding of 'women's religion', whether that exist Christianity or some other form of religious or spiritual practice (see for example McGuire, 1988, 1994, 1997; Jenkins 1999; Chambers, 2005). Sered's (1994) comparative study of religions in which women are dominant finds that although there are no universal patterns, women'southward religions tend to exist characterised by greater business organisation with 'this-worldly' matters including actual and emotional wellbeing (health and healing) and the quality of intimate and familial relationships, and to exist more than centred around the home, preparation of food, and sometimes the natural world. Such a decision is not surprising, given the widespread gender partitioning of labour which leaves women in most societies with greater responsibility than men for bodily and emotional care, for the maintenance of melancholia and kin relationships, and for domestic concerns in general. What is more than surprising is the way in which activities whose religious significance has previously been disregarded get-go to appear in a new light once a gender-disquisitional perspective is applied (Nason-Clark and Neitz, 2001). A recent instance is furnished past 24-hour interval'south (2005) study of an evangelical women's prayer grouping, which began by assuming that the 10 minutes of formal prayer at the end of the meeting was the religious chemical element before realizing that it was the preceding activities of java drinking and 'chat' virtually friends and family which really constituted the ritual and religious work of the group. As Sered (1994: 286) puts it, patterns which are institutionalized and esteemed in female-dominated religions tend, in other contexts, to exist 'subsumed under the categories of "folk-lore", "superstition", "syncretism", "heresy", or only, "ladies' auxiliary"'.
39As well as impacting upon frameworks, theories and concepts within the Sociology of Religion, a gendered perspective may therefore start to shift the field's focus towards topics which have previously received little attention. In very general terms one may speak of a shift of concern from the 'college' to the 'lower' or more 'mundane' aspects of religion, including the body, emotions, infinite and place.
Decision
40This article discusses a selection of contempo studies which have put gender onto the agenda of the Sociology of Religion. Such studies highlight some of the means in which gender affects religious practise and significance, and enhance awareness of the close and often constitutive relations between religion and gender. Taking the latter realisation every bit its starting point, the commodity proposes a theoretical approach to the sociological written report of religion and gender which distinguishes the main means in which religion may locate itself in relation to a prevailing gender order. This approach draws attention to the importance of ability in the study of faith and in lodge, for it reminds us that both organized religion and gender are centrally implicated in diff distributions of ability, and that their interplays serve and seek to reinforce existing distributions of power or to modify them – in various ways and by diverse ways.
41Although the sociological study of religion has been ho-hum to abandon its gender-blindness, the studies considered here suggest that this state of affairs is beginning to modify. The magnitude of the alter should not be exaggerated; at the present time one is likely to find 1 member of a kinesthesia working on gender, i paper in an edited collection dedicated to the topic, i stream on gender at a conference on the Sociology of Religion, and and then on. The belief that attending to gender tin can and should inform and enrich all study of religion is not notwithstanding firmly established. Changes in the academy may continue to issue change, not only as gender becomes entrenched in adjoining fields, simply as the gender remainder begins to shift inside the academic study of religion. Equally of import may be the changes in organized religion and society which strength attention to religion's relations with gender. Whether we are looking at campaigns against homosexuality and abortion, controversies over veiling, attempts to return to 'traditional family values', religiously-inspired terrorism and violence, or radical utopian eco-feminist movements, it is no longer easy to overlook the ways in which contexts of gender change and anxiety accept flushed out religion'due south central and abiding business organisation with gender roles and relations, and revealed information technology equally 1 of the cardinal sites in society for the defense or negotiation of unequal distributions of power.
Notes
- [1]
The show for women's greater religious commitment is now all-encompassing, and is summarised in Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi (1975), Francis (1997) and Walter and Davie (1998). Most of this evidence concerns women'southward involvement in Christianity. There is also growing evidence of women's asymmetric involvement in new forms of spirituality in the West (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Houtman and Aupers, 2006). Some debate has centred around Rodney Stark's argument that this tin can be explained past women's greater run a risk-aversion, whilst others have explored relations between gender orientation and existence religious (e.g. Thompson and Remmes, 2002).
- [two]
The one writer in the broad expanse of religious studies who has been, and still is, regularly cited in gender studies – albeit these days oft every bit an example of 'essentialist' reductionism – is Mary Daly. Despite her wide-ranging critique of the world's religions in books similar Gyn/Environmental (1979) she does non claim to be engaged in the sociological study of faith.
- [iii]
1 could also mention the diverse forms of marginal religion which flourished in the nineteenth century, and which sought either to negotiate an advantageous position within the gender order (questing), or to overturn that guild (counter-cultural) – for example, the Mormons, Shakers and Theosophists.
Source: https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_TGS_027_0033--gender-differences-in-religious-practice.htm
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