How Gender Shapes Experience and Identity in Religion

Introduction

Gender is vital to many religious orders. In the same way, religion has a major impact on gender relationships. The research on religion and gender starts from the larger interest in the anthropology of feminism and many approaches to the study of religion and gender have been advanced to study how gender shapes experience and identity in religion (Bjork-James, 2021). Studies in this vein show that religious practices influence the behaviours of female and male genders differently. The studies examine the changing norms of the two genders attending conversion to new religions or the way the roles of women and men are controlled and reformed by attending to religious practices. Also, the studies explore how gender itself shapes spiritual and religious ethics and practices. Although patriarchal relations in the society are key to most relationships, this principal is not universal. Some religions call attention to respect and cooperation for women over the social and traditional chain of command. Other religions favor the leadership of men but they indirectly give to women ethical identities and positions which allow women to exercise their power and own agency. Following the above, this paper critiques the different forms through which gender shapes experience and identity in religion.

Women Religiosity

Women are thought to be more religious than men; the finding has been observed in studies dating back as far as the in 1930s (Mitchell, 2022). Until the 1980s that academicians and scholars begun concerted efforts to justify this phenomenon. Traditionally, women have been considered to be more religious than their male counterparts. Moreover, this assumption has been more reinforced by the early analyses on the trends in religious behaviours in North America and European countries that are said to have high Christian populations. However, as studies continued to reveal that women are more religious than men and it being traditionally accepted in society, recent cases and differences of gender behaviours prove that this is always not the case. For example, more recent studies show that most witches and individuals engaging in witchcraft all over the globe are women. Talk about the famous Salem witch trials, Eve and her sinful apple and this claim is to a greater extent true. Elsewhere, in the Puritan Community, an ancient religious community, women held an unsafe position in the community; the Puritans constrained women to the role of child bearing, rearing children, household keeping, and model Christians who were subservience to their spouses (Mitchell, 2022). Remembering the story of Eve and her sinful Apple, the Puritans believed that women are easily tempted to sin. Indeed, Mary Webster’s story well justifies the belief that was held by the leaders in the Puritan Community.

The witch tales of Webster are a clear exemplification of how women are wicked and powerless people. Webster a resident of Hadley Massachusetts was a married woman without children. She thus survived on the help of her generous neighbors to fend his family. Unfortunately, it was later understood that Webster was not grateful and meek enough for the alms she received from her neighbors (Marshall, 2019). On the contrary, the wicked woman became disliked. Her neighbors indicted her for engaging in practices of witchery as they claimed she was an agent of the devil and she was responsible for the diseases that infected their livestock. Naturally, women are spiteful as compared to men; their wishful natural being is what prompts them to be envious to most people above them in social and economic hierarchy. Women will bewitch for even the slightest of material items to either be above or on the same level with their neighbors, or relatives. It is now more than three decades of studies of how gender shapes experience and identity in religion and it is true there are still complexities in understanding the relationship between religion and gender reflected in the different researches. Thus, the current empirical explanations that argue to show women are more religious than men are not conclusive.

Nurture vs. Nature

Nurture

The nurture explanation explains the gender gap of religion along factors of secularization, national economic structures, and the low numbers of women participation in the workforce. Aberdeen University’s Steve Bruce and Marta Trzebiatowska argue that the differences in gender roles in religion can well be explained by an amalgamation of different social factors which include women roles as children bearers, and death which tends them more to God than men (The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2014). Another factor cited by the sociologists is the pressure that men exert on women in order to control female sexuality. However, the sociologists argue that the main cause for the existence of the gender gap between men and women is the time-lag in the form of how secularization has affected women and men in the modern times. The writers argue that the pre-eminent roles of men in the professional sector and public life means that men have long been affected by secularization forces which in due course reduced the plausibility of religion in their lives and instead turned the rectitude of religion from a requisite to a personal preference to attend to when one has the time. Similarly as women are increasingly being affected by the wave of secularization and women emancipation that is altering their traditional gender roles, it is now not a matter of how but women will soon be the same in their levels of rectitude as men. As a result of the above, the long-traditional gender gap in religion will soon disappear as the proclamations of gender equality continue to rise and the social gender roles become the same. Certainly, women are now being untied from the traditional roles that inadvertently brought them closer to religion.

Following the above, sociologists have attempted to survey how the place of women in society notably the rate of their engagement in the workforce is set to affect their commitments in religion. Data gathered in Australia in 1983 by sociologist David de Vaus of the Australian Institute of Family Studies and Political Scientist Ian MacAllister from Australia National University showed that the lower levels of female engagement in the workforce is the reason to why women tended more to religion (Mitchell, 2022). First, the sociologists write that this allowed more time to women to attend to God and pray for their families. In their study, the sociologists found out that full-time employed women are not only religiously weak as compared to their unemployment female counterparts but also they have religious orientation like men. David de Vaus and Ian MacAllister hypothesize that work enriches working men and women a socio-psychological advantage that can be got from religion which in due course reduces their enthusiasm for seeking out God and it makes religion less important.

A related explanation for working women less participation in religious commitments has been advanced most recently by sociologist Landon Schnabel of Indiana University Bloomington. According to Schnabel, women who are in the workforce especially those working in high paying jobs do not find much social affirmation and validation of participating in religious congregations as compared to women who are acquiescent of the traditional gendered roles and outlooks (Ezeigbo, & Unaegbu, 2019). Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University explains that more Christian women in North America and Europe entered the workforce sector since the 1960s; then, these had realised they needed to create independent career identities along with their identities as home keepers (Woodhead, 2005). However, the majority traditional forms of Christianity did not support this viewpoint from women which resulted into a decline in the religiosity of women. In this view, it can be argued that the traditional forms of Christianity are proving hindrance to women fulfillment of their religious deities.

Nature

Theorists under the nature rationalization of gender and how it shapes experience and identities attribute the differences of gender in religion to physiological or physical factors such as biological predisposition, genes or hormones. For instance, Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark claims that the physiology of men resulting from their high testosterone levels explains their identities in religion. Stark’s reasoning bases on the popular norm and evidence that shows that men’s high testosterone levels is linked with their higher propensity to risking which is why they are less religious as compared to women (Miller, & Stark, 2002). In contrast, women are religious tendering since they have low testosterone levels. Stark’s theory aligns with Alan S. Miller’s and John P. Hoffman’s earlier thesis which cite men as having a high natural tendency to risk and as a result they are likely to chance that they will not be punished in life after death. On the other hand, women are naturally risk-averse which prompts them to live a religious life as a means to secure a place in heaven and avoid eternal punishments.

Conclusion

By and large, the arguments on how gender shapes experience and identities are varied and inconclusive. There are many reasons why some people tend to religion and others do not. While it is true the time-lag fact advanced by Steve Bruce and Marta Trzebiatowska under nurture is to some extent valid but not certain considering that there are many individuals in the workforce sector who attend religious congregations. Moreover, religious congregations in most religious are gazette for Sundays which is traditionally an office day-off. In the same way, the high innate testosterone levels in men mean that men will always take risk but not to the extent they will discount the eventualities of afterlife as Stark postulates which are distinctively biblical. Most men like women know that transgression is punishable but the secularization forces involving fulfilling gender roles, and social patriarchy norms sometimes are what prompt them to do wrong.

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