Introduction: Is secularism bad for women?: La laïcité nuit-elle aux femmes? (original) (raw)
Related papers
2011
The book aims to assess how women’s ways of understanding and experiencing religiosity fit within the broader context of religion in ‘the West,’ and, in particular, how the analyses of female religiosities inform our understanding on secularisation. By exploring diverse ways in which women approach religion in ‘the West,’ the volume scrutinises female religiosities in an interdisciplinary gaze. The book has been divided into three main sections. The first, deals with Christianity, the second with ‘Alternative Spiritualities,’ and the third, with Islam.
Religion and Gender
s Sex & Secularism provides a wonderful historical and contemporary account of the interactions and entanglements of secularism, gender, and sexuality. The book sets out on a historical quest, pre-eminently in Europe and the USA, to trace the genealogies of sexual and gendered arrangements frequently taken for granted today. Scott, however, scrutinizes these intricate settlements, and reveals the many problematic gendered assumptions.
Book Review: Sex and Secularism
Journal of Global Analysis, 2018
Many individuals have traditionally asserted that secular societies are much more likely to facilitate equality among the sexes. This should be a familiar refrain to not only the casual observer but many academics as well. After all, religion is traditionally associated with a bifurcated system of gender roles that frequently relegates women to the status of second-class citizen. However, this view is countered in Joan Wallach Scott's Sex and Secularism, a book contained detailed research into the traditional history of gender roles within a secularized society defined by the separation of church and state. Throughout these pages, Scott weaves an argument that reveals the myth behind the prevailing view that secularism is equated with progress and religion with backwardness.
Final 13 Feb 2019_Contestations of Feminism, Secularism and Religion_NJRS.docx
equality. Yet, contemporary feminist and women's movements in the West are largely understood as secular, and as rejecting religion, and religion is often perceived as the antithesis of empowerment and emancipation. In this article I problematise the relationship between feminism, secularism and religion via a discussion of secular feminist views on women and religion, and religious women's views on secular feminism. Bringing together previously separate strands of work, this article provides an original analysis of how both secular feminist women and non-feminist religious women engage in discursive articulations of Othering, constructing inferior subjects who are (dis-)placed outside the boundary of 'women like us'. Such discursive representations, which are rooted in perceptions of feminism and religion as unitary and static, contribute to the construction and maintenance of sharp boundaries between secular and religious women, thus hindering the potential for dialogue and collaboration in support of women's rights and gender equality.
Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
This chapter outlines major developments shaping contemporary debates about religion and secularism in public and political life and the role of women and feminism therein. It considers, from a gender perspective, debates in normative political theory about religion, secularism, and the Habermasian public sphere. These themes are explored as they are dealt with in feminist scholarship on the critical edges of Enlightenment thinking. The phenomena of the separation of church and state, the progressive “secularization” of modern societies and relegation of religious practice to private domains, and the growing acceptance of gender equality, are no longer presumed to be inevitable and interrelated. This chapter considers what is involved in rethinking secularism as a feminist political principle, in a context of globalization and in contemporary multicultural societies.
Gender: Religion, Secularism, and Women’s Empowerment
Religion and European Society: A Primer, 2019
This chapter argues that the ways of opposing religion and secularity in relation to gender produce forms of polarization between religious and secular actors that are undesirable and stand in the way of perceiving and hearing what women may need. It outlines how and why religious and secular approaches to issues of gender and women's empowerment so often seem to clash and sketches some of the critiques that have been articulated by feminist scholars from within cultural anthropology, history, and religious studies. The chapter focuses on the European context, and on religion in its association with minority groups, since this is where religion is usually problematized in relation to gender and sexuality. The complexity of minority–majority relations, and the ways this is informed by gender and religion, is often a minefield for policymakers on all levels of society.