Christian and Muslim Women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom Talk about Faith, Citizenship, Gender and Feminism

Abstract

What do women of religious faith think about citizenship, and how do they practise citizenship in their everyday life? What is the importance of faith in their lives, and how is religion bound up with other identities such as gender and nationality? How do religious women conceptualize ‘gender equality’, and what do they think about women’s movements and feminism? We address these questions through an examination of religious women’s lived citizenship, their lived religion and gender relations. For feminist scholarship, it seems a puzzle that women are drawn to religious traditions and institutions that practise female subordination (Mahmood 2005: 6). How can we understand this from the point of view of religious women themselves? Do religious women comply with, resist or subvert gender inequalities within their own communities? Through their participation in churches and mosques in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, the Christian and Muslim women in our study have chosen to identify with and belong to local religious communities.¹ Some of them would like to see greater gender equality and more opportunities for women within their faiths, while others accept, or even support, existing inequalities. Mainstream women’s and feminist movements, as well as feminist theory, have tended to marginalize religion, despite the crucial historical role played by religious women in bettering women’s position in the home and in society (Braude 2004), as well as their internal struggle for gender equality within their own religious contexts.