Women, Religion, and Power: Feminist Essays by Ivone Gebara

Abstract

Reviewed by: Women, Religion, and Power: Feminist Essays by Ivone Gebara Elaine Nogueira-Godsey Ivone Gebara. 2017, Mulheres, Religião e Poder: Ensaios Feministas [Women, Religion, and Power: Feminist Essays.] São Paulo, Brazil: Edições Terceira Via. Pp. 214. R$ 47,90. (Portuguese). In Mulheres, Religião e Poder: Ensaios Feministas (Women, Religion and Power: Feminist Essays), Ivone Gebara addresses her writing to feminist theologians. She reminds us that "to rethink religion from a feminist theological perspective means to embark upon an arduous, unending path of revision of traditional meanings towards provisory liberationist re-significations adjusted to our time and our bodies" (p. 14).1 Published in 2017, Gebara's book is as timely now as it was four years ago. She argues that if women's bodies are the feminist theological starting point, then poor women's daily forms of suffering—the pain brought by a life lived in spaces of vulnerability—must equally function as sources of feminist wisdom. These forms of suffering are constant reminders of the role that feminist theologians have undertaken—a role they must continue to play in order to promote social justice. Gebara argues that the broader feminist struggle will not effectively destabilize structural inequality if feminist theologians do not continue deconstructing contents, images, guilt, ambiguities, and contradictory teachings in religion. As such, she encourages us to examine old questions, which have reemerged begging for new answers. Gebara offers in her book "new flavors to season our daily food and strengthen our feminist theological trajectory" (p. 14). In this compelling work, Gebara begins with the feminist movement's historical trajectory. In chapter one, "Women's Awakened Consciousness After Centuries of Nightmare," and chapter two, "Dare to Dream, or How to Take Care of One's Own Wounds," she recounts the many victories achieved by historical feminists. Gebara evokes the suffragettes and argues that contrary to popular belief, their struggles are still relevant today. The right to study and to vote was only the start of a bigger fight, says Gebara: the ongoing battle against constructed gender roles relating to sexuality, motherhood, domestic violence, and freedom of sexual choice, the latter of which grew out of alternative feminists' philosophical [End Page 226] understanding of women's bodies. The pursuit of women's freedom is an endless historical process. To leave one's chains requires the daily activity of expanding our energies, opening ourselves to healthy breathing, and letting our voices be heard. It is daring to think and feel the world in a different way. In a similar political context of the Trumpian sexist rhetoric in the United States, Gebara details the patriarchal, chauvinist, and backward- facing aspects of contemporary Brazilian politics under President Jair Bolsonaro. In an analysis analogous to Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique (1963), Gebara analyzes current realities, such as the emergence of the "women's movement," present today in several Brazilian political parties and in associations linked to different Christian churches in Brazil. Gebara concludes that these women's movements are seeking to maintain the idea of a feminine essence as something pre-established by God as "woman's vocation" (p. 10). In chapter 3, "Advances and Setbacks in Women's History," Gebara further elaborates upon the above examples and reveals the co-optation of the feminist novelty: "an attempt to manipulate feminist ideals into the great networks of capitalist production and distribution of ideas" (p. 11). In those cases, she exhorts, the originality and innovation of the feminist struggle is commoditized and trivialized through false devices allegedly created to empower women. By ignoring the intersectionality of people's lives these movements speak as if women no longer need to fight for their dignity, arguing that women have already gained space in the labor market and that freedom will follow. Some women argue that the feminist "disease" needs to be eradicated because it is increasingly necessary to guarantee the order intended by God, family, and morality—emphasizing the pretentious idea of an immutable nature of human beings. Gebara reminds us that historical processes are neither homogeneous nor linear. There are steps that advance on one side and others that seem to go back on the other, both in consciousness...