Religious Orthodoxy, Empowerment, and Virtuous Femininity among Pious Women: A Cross-Religious Reading Between Muslim and Pentecostal Youth

Abstract

Similar conservative discourses on marriage, sexuality, and gender emerge from two waves of fieldwork that were conducted in Quebec (Canada) among young female converts to Islam and young Pentecostal women. The narratives support the broader literature on women who have embraced orthodox-style religions and find in the theology of submission the normative means and space to develop their own individual agency. This chapter explores the current conservative renewal from the perspective of young female Muslims and Pentecostals. I first explore their discourses regarding marriage, divorce, sexuality, chastity, and family, which shape representations of both men and women. I then examine the complexity, nuances, and contradictions of these narratives (dialectics of modernity and tradition, rupture and continuity) in which pious women construct an alternative femininity and their own understanding of feminism as an ideology of empowerment that draws on moral normativity.