The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society by Caroline Starkey and Emma Tomalin brings together a collection of forty-one essays organized in three parts to showcase how religion and society shape gender identities. The essays illustrate the complex debates that surround the study of gender and religion, and the multiple approaches required to understand, question, and envisage the influence of religion and gender in everyday life. The handbook’s conceptional framework considers intersectionality while also insisting that gender is not merely a “woman’s issue,” since it equally implicates men/masculinity. The book explores how religion and gender intersect with a variety of topics, including postcolonialism, secularization, diaspora/migration, and governance. These themes are discussed within the socio-religious and political frameworks of Western, South Asian, African and Oceanic societies.
The handbook is divided into three parts. Part 1, “Critical debates for religions, gender and society: Theories, concepts and methodologies,” navigates diverse themes including space and place, bodies and embodiment, the digital world, agency and identity, oppression and liberation, postcolonialism and methodological implications of ethnographic research. The selection of articles represents scholarly perspectives on how gender and religion is played out in different cultures. While Esther McIntosh (chapter 2) and Chia Longman (chapter 3) critique the androcentric and colonialist agenda behind the academic study of religion, Sneha Roy (chapter 6) explores how Buddhist nuns in Myanmar make meaning and find agency through civic activism. Sehrish Mushtaq and Fawad Baig (chapter 7), on other hand, discuss female agency and social activism in South Asia to explore how Pakistani Muslim feminists reclaim public and digital spaces as a means to (re)negotiate their place within Pakistan’s patriarchal and religious society.
Part 2 entitled, “Issues and themes in religions, gender and society,” includes 13 essays that draw attention to the ways in which religion directs normative socio-cultural understandings of cisgender identities, gendered roles in marriage and intimate life, and the formation of religious identities. For example, Sarah-Jane Page (chapter 16) explores how same-sex couples and women from different faith traditions navigate their religious lives. The essay provides a fresh perspective on the institution of marriage that moves beyond the normative Christian lense through which marriage is traditionally understood.
Rachael Shillitoe and Céline Benoit (chapter 18) provide an interesting perspective on the gender identity construction of children. The essay highlights that within the field of religion and gender studies, there is limited research on the experiences of children. To bridge this gap in scholarship the authors depart from the usual debates concerning religion and gender to explore how parents, families, and education influence the formation children’s gender and religious identities and their sense of self (266). The authors draw on the importance of bringing the voices of children, rather than adults, to the fore and encourage scholarship on childhood development to move past the Western, mainly anglophone, focus and also include the experiences of children from non-Western lands (271).
Part 3, “Local Contexts and Locations” tackles issues around gender, religion and society from a contextual perspective. Each ethnographic study in part 3 is set in a different country in Europe, North America, Latin America, the MESA/MENA regions, Africa, and Oceania. The rich selection of essays address pertinent and controversial issues that include gender justice, gender violence, the influence of post-colonialism on the construction of religious and social identies and notions of feminity/masculinity. On the subject of men/masculinities, Stephen Hunt (chapter 27) presents a compelling essay on Christian masculinities in Europe. The author highlights the importance of intersectionality to include the experiences of men and the need to overcome “gender-blindness” (404) in the study of religion where the perspectives of men are often overlooked. Together, the chapters provide a comprehensive sociological analysis on how religion influences social and individual imaginaries, whether it is imposed by institutions or willed by an individual.
A critical reader could potentially stumble upon debatable positions in some of the essays. For example. Emma Tomalin’s essay, “Inequality within religion: women’s leadership and religious lives” (477), points to the institutional challenges and limitations faced by Muslim women in holding positions of religious/spirtual leadership. It could be argued that the author potentially overstates these limitations. A discussion on current positive trends in Europe and North America, where there is an increasing number of female Muslim clerics, could enhance scholarly discussions surrounding gendered religious authority.
This handbook does well at traversing salient issues that are sometimes left in the margins of debates concerning gender, religion, and society. Overall, the handbook is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in gender studies and the anthropology of religion.
Samar Mashadi is a PhD candidate in religious studies at McMaster University, Canada.
Samar Mashadi
Date Of Review:
November 25, 2023