Evangelical women in search of perfection

Abstract

This article aims to offer an interpretative key still little used to understand the conservatism that circulates among evangelical women. It starts from the observation and analysis of services and congresses organized by pastor Ana Paula Valadão, between 2011 and 2016, and which were mainly about the body, sexuality and family. The events stimulated women to constant self-monitoring, to a “sacrifice of the self”, and strengthened the traditional male figure. Although the relationship between evangelical religion and gender has been scrutinized by socio-anthropological literature at least since the late 1990s, it is proposed that a dialogue with Angela McRobbie’s theory can advance the understanding of reproduction and the exacerbation of the “perfection dispositif”, which, in the case of religious women, neutralizes, naturalizes and gives spiritual justification to sexual and gender inequalities.