Gender

Abstract

This chapter provides a historical overview of gender and religion studies in sociology, reviews four areas of contemporary research, suggests how current research agendas can better engage the sociology of religion, and articulates a comprehensive conceptual framework. Women in conservative religions and the question of agency; feminism, religion, and religious women’s political activism; and religious masculinity reflect a critical turn in gender and religion studies but studies of gendered religiosity have been disengaged from gender theorizing and serve as a cautionary tale about specialization. The final section articulates a comprehensive conceptual lens, religion as a gendered social institution that intersects with other systems of inequality. This lens grounds the scholarship in both subdisciplines, thereby advancing the study of gender and religion from two disparate bodies of literature to an intersectional lens that considers both simultaneously. This ensures that religion is not discussed as sui generis or in a vacuum while allowing for topical, empirical, and theoretical flexibility to consider a range of phenomena.