Religious women: a feminist ethics of care, caring and care-giving

Abstract

ABSTRACT The role of nuns in the Catholic church as carers and caregivers has been given scant attention. This paper narrates a historical contextualised tale of an ethic of care, caregiving and caring. Interview data were drawn from a qualitative study of four Catholic nuns. Interviews were informal and conversational, with participants asked to reflect on how belonging to a religious order shaped their lives. The data was analysed for patterns that made sense of the data in terms of an ethic of care. Reflexivity is used as a methodological tool in the interpretation of the data to confound the simplicity of the storytelling as the researcher positions herself in the study. The Catholic nuns interviewed show how an ethics of care, caring, and caregiving can be enacted from, at times, a nebulous position. The implication is that an ethic of care is an important aspect of a religious community life and perhaps more broadly religious education.