ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the intellectual benefits of gender-sensitive research, drawing on recent scholarship and outlining an agenda for future research. Many pilgrimages stress the equality of pilgrims, and aspects of pilgrimage experience may cut through social and gendered norms, as reported by pilgrims in numerous contexts. The work of Jill Dubisch has been pivotal in stimulating and shaping gender-informed pilgrimage studies. Agency and authority are also sought, and found, by women in New Age religions such as Neo-Paganism and alternative or self-spiritualities as experienced through practices such as Reiki massage and yoga retreats. Religion and gender are both performative—not only represented by but also constituted in and through embodied performance as well as through mobilities that shape both religious-spiritually motivated travel and the rituals or activities enacted en route and at destination sacred sites. The study of pilgrimage and religious-spiritual travel has been impoverished where gender has been omitted/silenced and/or monolithic accounts/perspectives have been presented as normative.
