7.5 Theorists Flashcards
Gender, feminism and religion
Walter and Davies
Observed that in western societies influenced by Christianity, women are more religious than men on virtually every measure, which is a useful starting point to examine the relationship between religion and gender.
Grace Davie
Has argued that women feel closer to God because they are involved in the creation of life through pregnancy and childbirth.
Woodhead
Suggested women are more attracted to New Age Movements because they experience double alienation in the family…. they family fails to give them a sense of occupational identity, and they feel dissatisfied with their limited role as housewife and caregiver. New age movements offer a chance for self-exploration and can provide women with a sense of identity and self worth.
Criticism:
1. The New Age Movement is tiny, very few people and thus very few people show any interest in it!
1. If women did join the new age movement because of double alienation, then most women should be working class, but they are not, most women are middle class.
O’Beirne
Found that across major UK religions:
- 83% women in comparison to 74% men claimed some sort of affiliation to a religious organisation such as a church or denomination.
- This pattern was maintained against non-traditional religions such as spiritualism and Wicca, both nearly 70% women.
Pew Research Centre
In USA there was a similar distribution:
- 86% women
- 79% men
Among Americans, the Pew Research Center (2009) found women were more likely to attend a church service, pray
daily, say that religion is important in their lives and have a certain belief in a personal god.
claimed religious affiliation
Stark and Finke
Women are more religious because they are:
- More involved in socialising children
- Less involved in their careers
- More likely to join social groups.
De Beauvoir
Argues that women are more religious because women are the intended audience of the ideological messages being promoted: women should cook, clean, have babies and tolerate inequality and oppression in exchange for rewards in the afterlife.
Miller and Stark
They however, argue that there is little evidence to support the idea that ‘gender differences in religiousness are a product of differential socialisation’.
- Men are more likely to indulge in risky behaviour, such as not believing in a god, because of their biological evolution.
- Stark draws this conclusion on the basis that ‘in every country and culture men were less religious than women’.
Mary Daly
Theorised that women were part of a ‘planetary sexual caste system’ which was patriarchal and exploitative of women.
Daly
The early Catholic church systematically eliminated religions in which female gods were equal to or more powerful than male gods. It also ‘demoted’ the role of female figures in the historical record: for example, Mary Magdalene, who in reality played a large role in the spread of Christianity, is given less significance than is appropriate, according to Daly.
Daly
Churches have also tended to support a type of sex role segregation in society in which women are given a ‘derivative status’. This means that women derive their status not from their own contribution to society, but from their husband. Daly further argued that early socialisation of women into subordinate roles meant that women willingly consented to their inferior status.
Daly
Argued patriarchal forms have attraction in terms of offering
- Order - Religious beliefs and institutions provide certainties in an increasingly senseless and confusing world.
- Rules - Clearly identify limits of acceptable behaviour
“As long as both men and women understand, know and accept their place in this moral order, religions also provide women with:
* Shelter – a ‘home and haven’ in a male-dominated world
* Safety in a threatening world
* Belonging, in the sense of finding personal identity through group membership”
Daly
Argued that these benefits come at a price for women in terms of submission to patriarchal control.
- Religions are male-dominated, hierarchal institutions founded on patriarchal assumptions that are difficult to challenge.
- Men hold powerful positions. Men tend to have lower levels of religiosity than women, but they occupy the highest positions in religious hierarchies, it is mainly men who are priests and imams.
Radical Feminists also believe that religion often serves to compensate women for their second class status within religion and society more generally. For example, by providing psychological rewards if they accept their role as mothers and limit their horizons to fulfilling that role well.
Jean Holm
In many religions both menstruation and pregnancy are treated as impure or ungodly. For example, in Islam women who are menstruating are not allowed to touch the Koran. Jean Holm suggests that these various restrictions on the participation of women contribute to the devaluation of women in many contemporary religions.
patriarchy in religious ceremonies and practices
Karen Armstrong
Although some religious organisations do have women in senior positions, they are certainly the exception rather than the rule, and in most cases, this is the result of relatively recent reforms. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops and priests are men. Most branches of Islam do not recognise female Imams, although there is some debate among Islamic scholars about whether women can ever lead prayers and whether for female-only or mixed congregations. There have been female Rabbis since the 1970s but it is still condemned by orthodox Jews. Although there have been women priests in the Church of England since 1994, it took a further 20 years before there was a female bishop.
Karen Armstrong argued that the exclusion of women from the priesthood exemplified women’s marginalisation in religious and social life. Linda Woodhead has suggested that the exclusion of women both from positions of authority and from some religious practices comes from a deep-seated resistance to women’s freedom and choice altogether.
