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Gender As A Lens Within The Study Of Women In Religion

1016 Words5 Pages

Gender is known as the biological differences between the sexes that affect the cultural and societal perceptions about them. Studying women in religion aims to establish how culture, specifically religion plays a role in determining gender differences in the past and sometimes even the present. However, studying gender within the study of women in religion gives people the opportunity to gain insight into women in the past and how to question these attitudes. As will be discussed throughout the essay, there are several lenses through which gender can be analyzed in the study of women in religion.
Joan W. Scott’s essay focuses on the use of gender as a lens through which researchers analyze history. When studying women in history, Scott argues that analyzing gender and all that it encompasses such as how social institutions play a role in gender, …show more content…

It is clear that there are differences between the role of men and women throughout religion that stems from the biological differences between the two sexes. In both essays, the authors acknowledge that to study women in religion, it is necessary to look at gender and how gender influences the roles of women. Scott argues, “The term gender is part of the attempt by contemporary feminists to stake claim to a certain definitional ground, to insist on the inadequacy of existing bodies of theory for explaining persistent inequalities between women and men.” (Gross 1066) Using gender as an analytical lens allows researchers to explain why there are inequalities between the sexes. Similarly, Gross discusses feminism in her essay but is more concerned with the historical and descriptive accounts of women in religion. Nonetheless, gender is an important indicator of how accurate those historical accounts are due to the androcentric model. Ultimately, both essays demonstrate the different methods in which to analyze gender in the study of women in

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