ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the patriarchal power structures behind the religion–gender nexus and proposes suggestions for how these interactions can be captured and analysed in development practice. Currently, gender approaches make little explicit reference to the role of religion and offer virtually no guidelines on how to engage with it conceptually. The chapter proposes a new practical analysis tool to expose the power structures that the religion–gender nexus produces and preserves. The chapter uses the examples of female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage, reproductive health restrictions, and gender-discriminatory laws to demonstrate how power is at the root of what ultimately becomes generalised as ‘religious’ by development and is overlooked conceptually.
