The Task of Gender Role Differentiation in Foreign Missions: The Case of American Methodists in Rosario, Argentina, 1870–1880

Abstract

Instruction in proper gender roles was central to the reforming impulse of North American Protestant missions in the nineteenth century. The delineation of gender was an important corollary of the Protestant missionaries’ religious message, as has been described in various studies focusing on American and Canadian Protestant foreign and domestic missions.1 Adherence to the North Americans’ standards of gender behavior indicated a comprehension of the tenets of personal discipline and responsibility for one’s spiritual destiny at the heart of Protestant evangelicalism. Wherever they observed immigrants at home or the people of India, China, Hawaii, and other mission destinations abroad, American Protestants found women performing manual labor, men with irregular work habits, and both genders engaged in sexual behaviors that pointed to their moral degradation and religious error. Their efforts at conversion, then, were as much an effort to reform habits of daily behavior as they were an attempt to save the soul.