Religious citizenship and gendered sanctions in the lived experience of second generation Ghanaians

Abstract

This study seeks to understand how some African Initiated Christian churches in Amsterdam sanction discrimination against women in the exercise of the right to religious citizenship. This research also investigates how through the exercise of agency some female second generation Ghanaians contest, reinterpret or conform to gendered sanctions in the religious field. Data were drawn mainly from in-depth interviews, participant observation and informal interviews in Amsterdam. The exercise of religious citizenship is not a level playing ground for both females and males. The study concludes that religious sanctions on sex and sexuality pronounced in the religious field contradict human rights expressed in the nation state. The study also noted that the emergence of immigrant women’s engagement in institutionalised religiosity binds feminist scholars to rethink of religion as a field that does not generate only oppressed female citizens rather it also provides the space for females to exercise agency.