ABSTRACT
Why study gender? In the 1970s and 1980s, those establishing Women’s Studies courses in universities and colleges were giving this question much thought. Influenced by feminist politics, they saw that inequalities facing women in society were also visible in academia. As feminists had attempted to do in society, they aimed to reveal and eliminate inequality as regards women’s comparative exclusion from academic knowledge – as subjects, objects, students and teachers. They argued that although scholarship claimed to be objective it was in fact ‘androcentric’ or ‘phallocentric’, with ‘men’s experiences and priorities being seen as central and representative of all’ (Robinson, 1997, p. 2). Over twenty years later the ‘Why study gender?’ question is still not taken
seriously in the sociology of religion, nor in congregational studies – particularly in the UK (Walter and Davie, 1998, pp. 640-641). Yet, as this chapter will argue, gender should be of vital concern to those studying contemporary religion. This is so for three reasons. The first is that gender has become a significant field of academic enquiry. The second is that gender is a significant means by which social identities are established and, arising from this, a site of social conflict. The third is that gender is important for sociologists of congregations because a relationship frequently exists between congregational membership and gender. This chapter has two major sections. The first half of the chapter offers a
brief summary of the current state of research into gender in congregations – with a central focus on work in the UK – and provides illustrations and examples. This will be done with reference to the three reasons just outlined. In the second half of the chapter, in order to ground the chapter’s argument in my own empirical work, I present material from a recent ethnographic study of gender in an evangelical congregation, considering whether and how gender is a means by which social identities are established and occupy a site of social conflict, and how the significant gender imbalance in the membership of the congregation influences its dynamics.
