Gender Issues in Religions
One of the more pronounced effects of modernization on world religions has involved issues pertaining to gender identity and roles. The most obvious effect has been the increased visibility and prominence of women within many traditions.
Other issues include norms regarding sexuality and the status of LGBTQ persons, with regard to both a religion’s adherents and those in positions of leadership, such as clergy and rabbis. As the text’s chapters will show, the various religions—and divisions within each religion—maintain a diversity of positions on such issues. There is a strong tendency, however, in modem times for religions to be more inclusive with regard to gender issues.To some extent, the increased visibility of women also has caused the furtherance of modernization. As women increasingly feel themselves empowered and are afforded opportunities to effect change, their momentum propels modernizing transformations. Traditional patriarchal modes have tended to give way to more egalitarian ones, and old assumptions have gradually receded. To cite just one example, in the last twenty years the percentage of clergy in Protestant Christian churches who are women has risen quite dramatically. While in 1999 only 5 percent of senior pastors were female, ten years later this figure had doubled to 10 percent.— According to a recent study, in 2016 the percentage of women clergy was 20.7 percent.17
Corresponding to the increased visibility and prominence of women in many religions has been the dramatic development over the past five decades of feminist theory and its application to the study of religion. Sometimes referred to as women’s studies or as gender studies, academic approaches based in feminist theory have revealed the strong historical tendency of religious traditions to subordinate women and to enforce the perpetuation of patriarchal systems. On the one hand, these studies have revealed contributions of women through the ages that have hitherto been largely ignored, while on the other hand they have prompted changes within some religions that have expanded the roles of women and have provided opportunities for their greater prominence. In other words, studies based in feminist theory have to some extent changed the religions themselves, along with providing new and potent means of studying them.