Gender and Religion

9 Key excerpts on "Gender and Religion"

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  Sociology

  The Essentials

  • Margaret Andersen, Margaret Andersen, Howard Taylor(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 11 Gender 271 Defining Sex and Gender Sociologists use the terms sex and gender to distinguish biological sex identity from learned gender roles. Sex refers to biological identity, being male or female. For sociologists, the more significant concept is gender—the socially learned expectations, identities, and behaviors associated with members of each sex. This distinction emphasizes that behavior associated with gender is culturally learned. Gender is a “system of social practices” (Ridgeway 2011: 9) that creates categories of people— men and women—who are defined in relationship to each other on unequal terms. The definitions that surround these categories stem from culture—made apparent especially by looking at other cultures. Across different cultures, gender expectations associated with men and women vary considerably. In Western industrialized societies, people tend to think of men and women (and masculinity and femininity) in dichotomous terms, even defined as “opposite sexes.” The views from other cultures challenge this assumption. Historically, the berdaches (pronounced berdash) in Navajo society were anatomically normal men defined as a third gender between male and female. Berdaches, considered ordinary men, married other men who were not berdaches. Neither the berdaches nor the men they married were considered gay, as they would be considered in other places (Nanda 1998; Lorber 1994). There are also substantial differences in the construction of gender across social classes and within subcultures in a given culture. Within the United States, there is considerable variation in the experiences of gender among different racial and ethnic groups (Andersen and Collins 2016; Baca Zinn et al. 2015). Differences within a given gender can be greater than differences between men and women. That is, the variation on a given trait, such as aggression or competitiveness, can be as great within a given gender group as the difference across genders.

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  Indentity, Religion And Values

  Implications For Practitioners

  • C. Margaret Hall(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The extraordinary powers of religions influence many of the ways in which women and men see each other (Hussain, 1984). For example, historically women have been more associated with symbols of evil or temptation to sin than men. Furthermore, what people believe are religious dictates often have stronger impacts on their behavior than the views or pressures of families and friends (Ebaugh, 1993). If these forces conflict, individuals must decide whether to cultivate the sacred or the profane in everyday life (Randour, 1993).

  Religious devotions reinforce or challenge gender expectations in many different ways (Erickson, 1993). For example, some religions exaggerate secular evils by imposing restrictions on women’s social behavior through their devotional practices (Ebaugh, 1993). Individuals are not separate from their genders, and as gendered beings they need to recognize deep levels of reality that are not apparent to all (Collins, 1990). To some extent this kind of awareness can be realized by practicing religions that both promise and deliver increases in social rewards such as improved health or better functioning (Hunsberger, 1985). To the extent that women can improve their efficiency or well-being through religious or spiritual practices, religions can be considered a constructive resource for women.

  To the extent that formal religious affiliations determine social class memberships, gender also influences this correlation (Ryan, 1992). In fact, gender can be thought of as a type of social class, with women and men frequently having contrasting rather than similar religious experiences (Lorentzen, 1991). Even when women and men do not form clearly recognizable separate social classes with their own distinctive circumstances or beliefs, gender biases in religions may polarize them (Ryan, 1992). However, optimally, both women and men are able to identify meaningfully with the whole human race rather than only with their gender group, and this identification with the whole can dilute some of the dysfunctional intensities that necessarily flow from overly narrow gender identities (Hall, 1990b). The patterns of identification vary among different races, ethnic groups, and cultures, although consciousness must necessarily remain consistently related to all kinds of politics of empowerment (Collins, 1990).

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  The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

  • James A Beckford, Jay Demerath, James A Beckford, Jay Demerath(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  For reasons which merit separate analysis, the Sociology of Religion has lagged behind many other fields in taking gender seriously. Whilst small-scale, ethnographic studies have been most likely to recognise the significance of gender, dominant theoretical frameworks within the Sociology of Religion often remain gender-blind. Although there has been some debate about why women, in the West at least, are more religious than men, 1 this has largely taken place in isolation from what are still con-sidered to be the ‘big’ issues in the sociological analysis of religion, most notably issues con-cerning the growth and decline of religion in modern societies. This inattention to gender contrasts with the liveliness of gender studies within the acad-emy in recent decades. There have been a number of significant advances in theorising gender, most notably in three related areas. First, the idea that a distinction can be drawn between a biologically-given ‘sex’ and a socially-constructed ‘gender’ has been widely discredited. Historical studies like Laqueur (1990) demonstrate that sex is historically and culturally variable, with the modern idea of two separate sexes representing a shift away from the longer-established Western view that there is a single male sex, of which the female is an inferior manifestation. The ‘sex and gender’ model has also been undermined by a model of sex/gender as produced in and by social processes and performances (Butler, 1999), or as a form of ‘social embodiment’ (Connell, 2002). The latter view stresses the mutual constitution of bodies and social processes, such that it is impossible to prise them apart, whilst the former tends to reduce the bodily to the social. Second, rejection of the ‘sex and gender’ model is bound up with a rejection of the idea that there are ‘two spheres’ of masculinity and femininity or male and female.

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  Gender, Power, and Global Social Justice

  The Healing Power of Psychotherapy

  • Manijeh Daneshpour(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This portrayal often comprises their religious experiences and practices in everyday life and incorporates different levels of a religious order such as cultural, individual, and institutional. Based on this explanation, gender is not portrayed as a theoretical tool for sociological analysis: it is utilized as a pragmatic, observed, and essentialist classification (Joy, 2010 ; Woodhead, 2007). This theory of gender explains the fates of a distinct group of religious women that are perceived as homogenous and their religiosity as biological as opposed to patterns of the practices breeding specific gender rules irrespective of the structural sex. In this view, gender is conceptualized as an abstract classification beyond the real experiences of these social actors with a real sense of identity embedded in institutions and having concrete structural dimensions. However, there is also an emergent awareness in the analysis of gender closely linked with the concept of agency (Avishai et al., 2015). Based on this perspective, women’s higher level of religiosity has been linked to their exclusion from the religious power structure. It is understood as subversive or transgressive behavior, offsetting their experience of marginalization and inequality and their lack of formal power. Ironically, these gendered religious practices, inertly or not, serve as means and tools for changing or recreating religious commands. Further, studies on the relationship between Gender and Religion have been more general and descriptive even when they have used analytical and abstract categories. One tactic to classify the current research is to analyze religion at the micro, meso, and macro level

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  Norms and Gender Discrimination in the Arab World

  • Adel SZ Abadeer(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Feminists believe in the equality of sexes and reject the notion of complementarity of sexes. Embraced by conservative religionists, the complementarity of sexes underscores biologically determined gender roles. In contrast, feminists view gender roles as a social construct, unsettled, and subject to change. While cultural relativists use the term ‘sex’, feminists use the code ‘gender’ in their reference to women’s human rights. ‘Sex’ refers to the biologically fixed differences between men and women. In contrast, ‘gender’ is used to reevaluate women’s roles, critique traditions, and advance women’s rights (Mayer n.d., 1999, 2000). Religion is a cultural marker in many countries. In the Arab world, religion is the most important marker of culture, norms, and values. Cultural relativ- ists, including religionists, bolster and legitimize their claims by appropriating rights guarantees for religious freedom and nondiscrimination on the basis of religion. The right to religious freedom lies at the interface between civil and political rights (e.g., freedom of association and expression), and economic, social and cultural rights (e.g., access to education, health, and employment) and that between individual rights and group rights. The inclusion of group rights within a catalogue of human rights can be complex, exclusive, and dis- criminating. Group rights create conceptual confusion, particularly in situ- ations where assertions of individual liberty do not conform to those of the group or the collective identity, including the religious identity. In collectivist societies, claims based on religion often have a trumping effect on other claims, such as individual freedom (Chinkin 1999). The problem becomes more serious when such religious and collective beliefs and norms, come with a clear dichot- omy between the potential winners (or perpetrators) and losers (or victims).

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  Gender, Culture and Society

  Contemporary Femininities and Masculinities

  • Chris Haywood(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Gender, Culture and Society provides an Introduction 9 Gender, Culture and Society authoritative profile and critique of recent developments in sociological and cultural theories of gender relations. As we demonstrate, this is a complex area, increasingly conscious of the complicated relationship between theoretical frameworks, methodological strategies and the phe-nomena subject to examination. It is important to hold these relationships in a critical synthesis which seeks to preserve a materialist core from earlier feminist accounts focusing upon patriarchal relations, while incorporating insights from more recent reflection on representation, identity and cultural difference with reference to women’s and men’s social experi-ences. In other words, notions of what are referred to as decentred forms of performing genders and hybrid (mixing of) sexualities are being consti-tuted within a wider arena of late modernity, which in turn they are helping to shape (Jameson, 1991). From the theoretical investigation emerges an evaluation of past understandings and analysis of implications for contemporary political practice. In social relations, people occupy cer-tain positions simultaneously. We need to think about not the ways social categories accumulate but the ways that they inflect. When we talk about the notion of power, we have to think about it relationally, thinking about powerful in relation to whom. In this way, we do not look at power as an either/or division but as being much more relational. We can say power is shaped relationally: one group is both powerful and powerless. Understanding Social and Cultural Change: The Collective Political Subject and Pluralized Identities The final aim of this book is to preface our discussion of social change and gender relations by highlighting the importance of the political context of gender and social change.

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  Gender and Other Identities: Complex conceptualizations in the new age

  • Margaret F. Bello(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Source: Image by Karegivers. The social construction of gender identity plays a very important role in a way that it advocates the interaction between the individual and the social-cultural milieu and the various ways in which all these interactions between people are used to determine the meanings of their behavior. Gender and Other Identities: Complex Conceptualizations in the New Age 100 The various studies conducted in the past about the social construction of gender identity always try to resolve information behaviors models of individuals. This is of the view that individual information behavior is determined by group memberships and a number of cultural, situational, personal, social, and organizational factors (especially values, social norms, and customs) (Talja et al. 1999). There are many other elements such as constructivism, collectivism, and constructionism that are not adequate enough in getting a better insight into social aspects of various gender identities. For instance, collectivism assumes that individuals form their knowledge while interacting with the environment and that during the process, both the environment and individual are changed. The concept of dialectical relationship between the individual and the socio-cultural milieu is considered as an important approach in this subject matter. The central assumption of collectivism is that integrating psychological issues such as “relevance” concepts to study information behavior of individuals is not feasible at all as individuals are social and cultural beings (see Hjorland 1999). This socio-cultural perspective is based on the basic belief that social practice is active when people engage in talks with others while it hampers when the limited abilities of people’s physical as well as linguistic tools for dealing with the community in which they work get exhausted.

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  LGBTIQ+ people and Pentecostals

  • Marius Nel(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • LIT Verlag

    (Publisher)

  At the same time, it should be acknowledged that sexuality is far more complicated than what people in the ancient world thought (Bartlett, Weerlose Weerstand, 273). 644 Alcoff, Linda. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 154. 193 different societies define masculine and feminine traits in different ways, implying that sex and gender can be entirely separable. What then does gender consist of? Earlier, gender was defined as social expectations about the appropriate behaviours for females and males (here used to denote biological sex), as established by social institutions and influential individuals. To have a gender is to occupy a certain role within a given society, partly defined by individual choice and biological facts but also by the demands imposed by the establishment that defines normativity. Femininity is then not detemined by having a female body as the result of biological sex but rather a matter of occupying certain social roles and taking up certain traits and activities, demonstrating the distinction between biologically determined sex and socially constructed gender. 645 Newer research emphasises that even in the case of biological sex, it should be interpreted as (at least partly) socially constructed. Only genitalia are determined; all other aspects of sexual relationship are socially constructed. 646 Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), a Roman African and Christian philosopher whose writings influenced Western Christianity and philosophy in decisive ways, writes that in a marital relation, the wife’s “natural” role was one of subordination and subservience, a view found in Paul’s writings as well (e.g., in Eph 5:22-24). 647 The marital relation is analogous to the relation between a master and a slave, with the expectation that the wife will fulfill the role of a dutiful slave.

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  Cultural Anthropology

  An Applied Perspective

  • Gary Ferraro, Susan Andreatta(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Some individuals, however, do not fit within the binary notions of a female or male body nor do they identify as a woman or man. Gender refers to “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women” (World Health Organization 2015) (see Figure 11.1). For some individuals the gendered dichotomy of man and woman is limiting, for it does not sex Where men and women differ genetically, with women having two X chromosomes and men having both an X and a Y chromosome. sexual dimorphism The physiological difference in form between men and women. intersex Genetically having the combination of both male and female organs and hormones. gender The roles, behaviors, and attributes a society considers appropriate for members of the two sexes. FIGURE 11.1 Young children learn by observing and copying their parents. A Ju/’hoansi from the Kalahari, South Africa, is teaching his son to hunt with a bow and arrow, which is pre-dominantly men’s work. Louise Gubb/The Image Works Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-300 Sex and Gender ■ 257 account for those who do not exclusively identify with their biological sex assigned at birth. One’s gender iden-tity, that is, a person’s perception or sense of themselves as male, female, or transgender, perhaps lies more to one end of a masculine or feminine continuum. Similar to how culture is learned, so too is gender. Gender affects and is affected by social, political, eco-nomic, and religious forces, and thus, continuously evolves with time. Body adornment, clothing style, com-munication patterns, and interests enable people to express their gender identity. In other words, gender expression is the way in which people behave or act to communicate their gender in a given culture.

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