Female Exclusion from Religious Roles: A Cross-Cultural Test of Competing Explanations

Abstract

Data from a cross-cultural sample of 93 societies were used to test three theories that could account for the exclusion of women from community religious roles: gynephobia, resource theory, and differentiated social spheres. Results from a multiple regression analysis suggest that only resource theory has any ability to predict societal patterns excluding females from religious roles. In particular, it is most effective in predicting the likelihood women will be allowed to assume the role of shaman. Women are most likely to be shamans in societies in which they are highly influential in kin networks and yet retain little control of property. These factors are discussed as they relate to opportunities for social sponsorship and to a functional aspect of social marginality that favors selection for shamanship. Despite widespread interest in the ways in which sexist constraints are imposed on women, little is known about the operation of such mechanisms in specific institutional contexts. For example, the exclusion of women from full participation in the life of the religious institution has been recently remarked (see, for example, Driver; Ermath; Harkness; Neal, a, b; Swidler; Wallace), but few explanations have been offered to account for the phenomenon and fewer empirical tests of theoretical insights have been applied. Lehman (a, b), in the most sociologically insightful studies to date, has examined the effects of demographic, social psychological, and organizational setting variables on congregants' attitudes toward women ministers. But his work fixes principally on the characteristics of congregants and congregational dynamics, rather than on characteristics of the aggregate of prospective female clergy, (such as the degree of power they *I thank Lynda Lane Martin for her invaluable assistance in the coding and analyses of data presented in this paper. It is a revised version of a paper read at the 1979 meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. I am grateful also to Martin King Whyte for providing previously unpublished data that I have used and to Gerhard Lenski and anonymous referees for their helpful comments on a previous draft. ? 1982 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-77321821010079-98$02.00