Gender and Religion in Global and Local Contexts: Exploring Women’s Participation, Sexual Misconduct, and Reproductive Trauma

Submitted to Program Units
1: Sociology of Religion Unit

This panel explores gender and religion in a variety of contexts using diverse methods. The first paper relies on a global survey of Christian churches to explore women’s participation and gendered dynamics in church life, with comparisons across countries. The second paper uses a field experiment to explore whether an applicant’s acknowledgement of past sexual misconduct affects opportunities for pastoral employment in Protestant churches, with surprising findings. Using qualitative interviews, the third paper examines how religious involvement can be a potent resource for Black mothers embedded in a rural, predominantly Black community as they navigate a fragmented maternal health care system and reproductive trauma. The fourth paper employs ethnographic fieldwork in India, Canada, and the U.S. among Hindu Adhiparasakthi communities to investigate the role of women’s leadership in sustaining religious communities locally in a transnational context.

Papers

Gina Zurlo, Harvard University

Where Can Women Do What? A Quantitative Analysis of the Gender Gap in World Christianity

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary findings from a new project, “Women in World Christianity: Global Perspectives on Christian Participation,” which measures the gendered gap between membership and participation in churches worldwide. The project’s Christian Participation Index allows for comparison at the country level of differences between men and women in church attendance, prayer, importance of religion, supernatural beliefs, pastoral leadership, and other forms of church leadership. Such information can be applied contextually to address the gendered dynamics of church life and interrogate unequal social norms that perpetuate women’s overlooked status in churches worldwide. This paper will present the assumptions and theories undergirding this project, methods and sources used to create this dataset, preliminary findings, and areas for future potential sociological and quantitative research on women in World Christianity.
Nanette Spina, University of Georgia

Women’s Leadership and Transnational Belonging in the Global Hindu Adhiparasakthi Tradition

Abstract

Scholars in the social sciences have long observed that migration has been a central concern of ethnographers across disciplines. For ethnographers today research interests continue to expand focusing analysis on how the global intersects with the local in communities across borders. When theoretical analysis is employed alongside ethnographic fieldwork, the links between the global and the local come into sharper focus and we are able to make further connections across multiple locations in the lives of individual agents. Based on fieldwork in India and North American immigrant communities within the Hindu Adhiparasakthi tradition, this paper investigates the role of women’s leadership and ritual authority, community-building, and how religious communities are sustained locally in a transnational context. These components illustrate networks of people working transnationally to achieve a greater expression of community across borders, one that places devotion, service, and a sense of interconnectedness at the heart of everyday life.
Carolina Seigler, Princeton University

Better the Devil You Know: The Effect of Sexual Misconduct Disclosure on Future Pastoral Employment

Abstract

Evidence of sexual violence has been notably visible within large religious organizations like the Catholic Church, but observational data highlight patterns of lenience towards perpetrators in other faith settings as well. Many spiritual leaders who violate their parishioners are recidivists, serially committing sexual crimes in multiple congregations. What remains unclear, however, is whether pastoral search committees are knowingly hiring spiritual leaders with histories of sexual misconduct. A field experiment run from Sept 2023-Sept 2024 explored whether an applicant’s acknowledgement of past professional misconduct affected opportunities for pastoral employment. Applicants to pastoral jobs who disclosed sexual misconduct were almost twice as likely to receive callbacks than those who did not. This study successfully applies a long-tested sociological experimental method to a setting where it has not yet been utilized, thus contributing novel causal evidence concerning a phenomenon that is just as socially important as it is empirically understudied.
Rose Archer,

Iris Manburg, University of Chicago

The Long-Term Impacts of Reproductive Trauma in Rural Black Birthing Communities and the Role of Religious Involvement

Abstract

This paper examines how religious involvement may be a particularly potent yet understudied resource for Black mothers embedded in a rural, predominantly Black community as they navigate a fragmented maternal health care system and cultivate strategies of healing and recovery in light of reproductive trauma. By drawing on 29 qualitative interviews with Black mothers, this study engages a life course perspective through a Womanist sociological lens to demonstrate how Black mothers navigate the long-term impacts of reproductive trauma through four key social processes: delaying individual responses to reproductive trauma, managing heightened grief across the life course, reevaluating healthcare utilization, and extending the “long arm” of religion through (non)organizational religious practices. We conclude by providing recommendations to guide future research examining the intersections of religious involvement and reproductive trauma in Black birthing communities.

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LCD Projector and Screen

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Session Length

90 Minutes

Schedule Preference Other

Not Tuesday

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Gender and Religion in Global and Local Contexts: Exploring Women’s Participation, Sexual Misconduct, and Reproductive Trauma

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Papers

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Full Papers Available

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