Religious Women and Gender Equality

Abstract

This chapter explores how the interviewed Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom talk about gender equality. In the first section, we discuss theoretical approaches to gender equality and outline our conceptual framework, focusing on the contested notion of ‘gender equality’ in culture, feminist theory and activism, and in political and legal institutions. In the next section, we describe and analyse the main representation of gender equality that emerged in our interviews. We found that ‘equal worth’ rather than ‘gender equality’ was the preferred notion among the participants. Within the overall dominant discourse of ‘gender equality as equal worth’, however, we identified four different perceptions of gender equality that are discussed in subsequent sections: the perception that gender equality is impossible because of God-given prescriptions; the notion of gender equality as differentiation without hierarchy; the conception of gender differentiation in the family and equal opportunities in the public sphere; and the perception of gender equality as embracing difference. We found that gender differences are emphasized as normative as well as descriptive, but gender equality is not necessarily seen as a prioritized issue, while notions of respect and understanding play a prominent role when the interviewees talk about gender equality. Some of the women were critical of their religious tradition with respect to women and gender equality, however, and this is addressed before the concluding section ‘Complex notions of gender equality as equal worth’.