ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the development of multifaithist governance in the UK and the particular implications for women. It draws on instances from contemporary British politics to highlight the many ways in which the state’s multifaithist policies have empowered and authorised patriarchal groups in the name of religion and simultaneously undermined feminist perspectives and the power of secular women’s rights organisations. While accepting Naomi Goldenberg’s proposition that the deconstruction of religion as a category could carry the potential to reveal power relations that are veiled by ‘mythologies of difference’, this chapter questions whether erasing religion as a category can in and of itself undo the power and impact of religious organisations and leaderships. This chapter demonstrates the ways in which a hegemonic alignment across the state and religious organisations in the UK has become embedded within material structures and institutional practices that cannot easily be erased through discursive deconstruction. The conclusion asserts the need for a particular form of secularism as the most effective immediate and material response for securing women’s rights and equalities against the onslaught of multifaithism, elucidating the potential of secularism as a tool for contesting religious authority and patriarchal power.
