Theory of Women in Religions

Just one year after Religions for Peace—the world’s largest interfaith coalition advancing peace—elected its first female SecretaryGeneral, it is fitting that we should examine Theory of Women in Religions, by Catherine Wessinger, an impressively broad examination of the forces that have affected the status of women through history. The book explores the socioeconomic and psychological factors that have shaped gender roles in prehistoric and historic societies. At its core, the book argues that changes in technologies used by humans to feed themselves and their families shaped economic structures and practices, including a gendered division of labor, which in turn shaped gender roles. Religion, the author argues, provided ‘‘a key arena for the promulgation of gender ideals, roles, and relationships that reinforce gender inequalities in families and society.’’ The volume provides a helpful balance between theoretical analysis and illustrative case studies that enable the reader to apply and test the theoretical arguments in a wide variety of historical, geographic, and religious contexts. The volume unfolds in six chapters, including an introduction, an overview of methodological approaches and key terms, an exposition of the economic theory and additional psychological theories, and an outline of 11 sociocultural and religious issues that shape women’s roles within diverse religious contexts. The introduction poses a set of framing questions that set up the intellectual trajectory of the book: ‘‘Is patriarchy in religion and society inevitable? Is subordination of women in society caused by religion? . . . Is it possible to create families, societies, and religions in which females and males are equal? If so, what are the factors that promote equality?’’ (p. 1). The discussion is framed further by four fundamental assertions: (1) religions reinforce existing economic and gender inequalities in a given society; (2) religious traditions contain moral resources that can be used both to perpetuate and challenge gender inequality; (3) religious representations of gender evolve and change over time; (4) division of labor by sex, arising from technological and economic changes, is strongly correlated with the relative positions of power and authority held by women in religious contexts. The case studies draw from Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish contexts and concretize for the reader the diversity of institutional, doctrinal, ritual, political, and sociological factors that shape the roles of women across diverse contexts. A strength of Wessinger’s analysis is her ability to draw from a wide diversity of religious and spiritual traditions, thereby avoiding a more narrow Christocentrism or tokenistic treatment of non-Christian traditions to illustrate her argument. The chapter ‘‘Foundations, Methodology, and Key Terms’’ equips the reader (and this will be especially helpful to undergraduate students) with the conceptual framework and lexicon to fully appreciate the arguments in the volume. Pedagogically, the chapter is very helpful in articulating a wide range of questions that can be asked about the gendered nature of various facets of religion, for example, conceptions of the divine, religious symbols, women’s agency, religious leadership, and so forth. (In some cases, however, the questions set up a false dualism, such as ‘‘Does religion promote equality for women, or the subordination of women?’’ which Wessinger herself argues against elsewhere in the book.) Methodologically, Wessinger’s book is grounded in the field of the history of religions and draws on an impressive variety of disciplines—psychology, archaeology, theology, and anthropology, among others—to unfold her arguments. As she notes, interdisciplinarity, which aligns with methods in women’s and gender studies, is necessary to increase understanding of the complexity of religious expression across diverse contexts. It may be helpful, however, to sharpen and clarify the use of certain terms: in some cases ‘‘religion’’ and ‘‘culture’’ are Reviews 93