Bargaining with gendered egalitarianism. A transnational compensatory patriarchy in Polish Catholic Missions in England, Belgium, Sweden

Abstract

The article examines the transformations of masculine formal (ordained) power in the Polish migrant religious organisations of the Roman Catholic Church. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 97 transmigrant women and men (consecrated and lay activists) involved in 14 Polish Catholic Mission organisations in England, Belgium and Sweden, the article gives an insight into various criticisms of patterns of priests’ patriarchal power in the Polish structures of the Roman Catholic Church. The analysis highlights how such power transforms in a transnational context when these organisations have to adapt to and function in more egalitarian, pluralistic and secularised Church organisational cultures than in the more patriarchal culture of Poland. We argue that the transnational context reinforces patriarchal models, albeit in a changed, hybrid form that we call ‘transnational compensatory patriarchy’. Our contribution to the discussion on the gendered transformation of power in transnational religious organisations focuses on two issues. First, we analyse the under-researched transformation of the patterns of masculine formal power in religious migrant organisations. Second, we show through a concept that we call ‘bargaining with egalitarianism’ how patriarchal power isomorphically (and hybridically) adapts itself to the more egalitarian context without losing its patriarchalism, which operates in the sending country. Therefore, we indicate the complexity and ambivalence of the transformation of masculine power by pointing to its intersectional sources and various ways of changing gender regimes.