ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question of ‘feminisation’ of structures, and refers particularly to the structure of General Chapter, highest organ of government in a religious society. The General Chapter is an amazingly democratic organ of government to have persisted through long years of enculturation of religious orders by a society based on autocracy, whether feudal or monarchical. Religious orders of women within the Roman Catholic tradition have typically been female replicas of the male models. When the structures were finally made more flexible, in the wake of Vatican II, the hidden rebellion dissolved into many departures from religious life. One result of this male influence in the development of the female orders has been the adoption of the patriarchal structures of Western society. Among the consequences has been a violence that many women religious seem to have to do to themselves to fit these largely ‘masculine’ structures.
