Religious Gender Research Articles

RELIGIOUS TENDENCY AND GENDER ROLES: PREDICTORS OF THE ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN’S WORK ROLES?

The purpose of this study was to investigate if religious tendency and gender roles predicted attitudes of Turkish university students towards women's work roles. The study was conducted with 138 students from the Educational Sciences faculty of Ankara University. The Attitude Towards Women's Work Roles Scale (Kuzgun & Sevin, 2004), Religious Tendency Scale (Onay, 1997, 2002), and Bem Sex-Role Inventory (Bem, 1981) were the tools employed in order to collect data. The findings revealed that the thought dimension of religious tendency, feminine and androgynous gender roles significantly predicted attitudes towards women's work roles.

Understanding Islamic Perspective of Mental Health and Psychotherapy

This paper is an attempt to provide foundational information about Islamic perspective of mental health and psychotherapy. It further highlights the historical contribution of Muslim philosophers and physicians to the field of psychotherapy. In the aftermath of the 9/11 and 7/7 tragedies, there has been a growing need to understand the Islamic perspective of mental health and gain insight into the followers of this faith otherwise perceived as ‘mysterious and Far Eastern’. A case example illustrates how counselors/therapists can effectively incorporate religious-cultural aspects of Islam in their work with Muslim clients so that they could work more effectively with their Muslim clients in the post 9/11 climate. Health care professionals must be sensitive to and fully aware of the unique religious traditions, cultural norms and gender sensitive values of their Islamic psychiatric patients so that they could introduce modern therapeutic interventions with less resistance from their clients.

Public attitudes towards survivors of brain injury

Primary objective: To explore the effects of religious identity, gender and socioeconomic status (SES) on public attitudes towards survivors of brain injury.Research design: An independent groups design was used to compare the attitudes of Northern Irish participants.Methods and procedures: The participants were asked to complete a modified form of the Community Attitudes to Mental Illness scale. The new questionnaire replaced the original scales’ emphasis on mental illness with that of brain injury. Complete data was available for 179 participants for the religious identity and gender analysis and 124 for gender and SES. Analyses of variance were conducted on these variables.Outcomes and results: Significant differences between male and female attitudes were found along with significant interactions between religious identity and gender and SES and gender.Conclusions: Religious, economic and gender-based divisions in society affect attitudes towards survivors of brain injury.

The Effect of Egalitarian and Complementarian Gender Role Attitudes on Career Aspirations in Evangelical Female Undergraduate College Students

This research investigated the effect of two opposite religious gender role attitudes (Complementarianism and Egalitarianism) on the career aspirations of female college students at an Evangelical Christian university in the Midwest. A survey measuring Egalitarianism / Complementarianism gender role ideology and career aspirations was distributed to a random sample of 400 students of which 271 participants responded. Results indicated a statistically significant relationship exists between gender role attitude and career goals. Results also showed that an Egalitarian gender role attitude has a positive effect on the level to which a female aspires.

Effects of Religious Orientation and Gender on Cardiovascular Reactivity Among Older Adults

Recent attention has focused on the relationship between religiosity and health. Although many pathways have been proposed to account for this relationship, little empirical research has investigated specific pathways in relation to specific physiological functions. This study assessed the roles that religious orientation and gender play in moderating psychophysiological reactivity to laboratory stressors among older adults. Those participants characterized by an intrinsic religious orientation (IO) demonstrated less reactivity than did those characterized by an extrinsic religious orientation. Gender did not influence reactivity. There was some evidence that the effect of religious orientation is more pronounced for interpersonal than cognitive-type stressors, although the strongest findings were evident when stressors were aggregated. The magnitude of these effects suggests that they are of practical significance. Given these results and the known relationship between reactivity and hypertension, it is proposed that IO may result in decreased risk of developing hypertension in older adults.

Talking About Sex: Religion and Patterns of Parent–Child Communication about Sex and Contraception

Despite the association between religiousness and conservative sexual attitudes, links between religion and patterns of parent–child communication about sex and birth control are largely undocumented. This study examines these relationships using two nationally representative data sets of parents and adolescents. I evaluated a conceptual model of religious influence on the sexual socialization of adolescents. Results suggest that parental public religiosity curbs the frequency of conversations about sex and birth control, and after accounting for conversations about sexual morality, so does parental religious salience. Despite notable relationships with religious affiliation, age, race, and gender still shape parental communication patterns most consistently.

Catholic anti-heroines: Craik, Sewell and Yonge

An anti-Catholic panic followed Newman's conversion in 1845 and intensified in 1851 after a second flood of conversions. Two successful religious novelists, Dinah Mulock Craik in Olive (1850) and Charlotte Mary Yonge in Heartsease (1854), undercut the attractions of Catholicism by associating it with women who are represented as inferior, both in terms of narrative impact and of appropriate gender behaviour, and who act as foils to an idealised heroine. These novelists treat Catholicism neither by arguing with its principles nor by describing its practices; rather, they marginalise it through presenting it as a religion of the marginal. This particular response to the anti-Catholic panic is affected by the reception of a slightly earlier novel. Elizabeth Sewell's Margaret Percival (1847) attacks Catholicism but nevertheless romanticises it, embodying it in the person of a beautiful, brilliant and aristocratic young widow, passionately loved by the protagonist. Sewell's conflicted attitudes towards both religious freedom and gender relations aroused a hostility that evidently acted as a warning to her fellow-novelists.

Good Wives, Family Protectors: Writing Jain Laywomen's Memorials

While Jain religious models of virtue articulate the renouncer as the focus of virtue, Jains likewise participate in the western Indian discourse of women's virtue, which centers around the dedicated wife (pativratā) and the virtuous woman (satī). The parole of virtue in Jain dedicatory memorials can be seen as explicitly gendered; lay Jains are represented as the great patron or the dedicated wife. For Jain laymen who cannot be represented as great patrons, there is no langue to use to represent them. For Jain laywomen, the discourse of satīs is invoked to frame the woman as virtuous and worthy of celebration-even in those memorials where women participate in the great patron model. These memorials are a place to examine how the telling of women's lives serves as a testing ground for competing ideologies and illustrates the patterns of negotiation between ideologies based on religious identity and gender.

GENDER AND RELIGION IN RECENT VICTORIAN STUDIES PUBLICATIONS

IN RECENT YEARS, literary critics and historians have become more conscious of how advantageous it can be to bring together scholarly work in religious studies and contemporary theories of gender. While the texts I will evaluate here exhibit greater or lesser degrees of awareness of current theory in its purest form, all share considerable interest in analyzing Victorian religion with respect to questions of sex. From traditional approaches of social history applied to women to specific studies of authors, from collections of critical essays to a book-length edition of the gems of a nineteenth-century sisterhood's archive, the fields of religious studies and gender studies can no longer be separated in critical practice to the degree that they had been in the past. In general, cultural studies approaches have yet to catch up with the rich scholarly possibilities offered by an exploration of Victorian Christianity. For the purpose of this essay, I have not delved deeply into works of postcolonial studies, nor have I focused on book-length inquiries into traditions outside Christianity. To be sure, there is much to investigate in those areas. But for the most part, as of this writing, book-length publications are simply not yet available.Cynthia Scheihberg's important book, Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture (New York: Cambridge UP, 2002), was released too late for full inclusion in my essay, but should be recognized as among the significant new work in the field. We are working with a field that is only twenty years old, one that has seen substantial growth and suggested numerous directions for future research.

Lesbians, Gays and Religion

SUMMARY This study measured the effects of religious affiliation and gender on attitudes about lesbians and gay men among 2,846 college graduates who were beginning graduate study in social work or counseling. Males were more negative than females in their attitudes toward both lesbians and gay men. Conservative Protestants were the most negative in their attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, while those who were Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish or claimed no religion were most positive. Beliefs that the Bible forbids homosexuality are discussed and readings and arguments challenging this belief that can be used as class content are presented.

A community of education: Nepalese children living and learning religious ritual

This paper expands and extends the existing qualitative literature on the relationship between children and the social environment. With reference to a group of Nepalese children I highlight how children learn about religious ritual, and specific rituals in which they engage during their childhood years. I also explore the differences and similarities of children's religious ritual experiences between religious affiliation, castes and gender. Analyses of ethnographic and interview data revealed four important points. First, the children equated religious ritual learning in the forms of daily puja and the coming‐of‐age ceremonies. Second, both Hindu and Buddhist children engaged in these rituals and did not differentiate how Hindu worship differed from Buddhist worship. Third, the children identified their social world—their immediate and extended family and friends—as the primary place where they learned about religious rituals. Finally, children from the low castes, when socialised with children from higher castes, participated in religious ritual more often than children who did not socialise with children from the higher castes.

Religious Fundamentalism and Gender Differences

The role of religious fundamentalism and its relationship to shame and guilt was evaluated in 107 students who attend a church-sponsored university. A number of personality measures were given and gender differences were analyzed. The role of externalization was similar for males in this sample to that of earlier studies. However, it was found that females showed positive correlations between externalization and both shame and guilt. For females, more fundamentalistic religious training may help to contribute to an external orientation at the expense of identifying with a personal religion, and appropriate guilt.

Religious Mysticism and Gender Orientation

This study of 411 undergraduates utilized the short form of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and a modified version of the Hood Mysticism Scale (M-scale) to examine the relationship of gender orientation with mystical experience. The hypothesis - that participants classified on the BSRI as feminine or androgynous each would score significantly higher on mysticism than persons classified as masculine - was confirmed. The suggestion is made that persons who score high on mysticism are persons who have developed a feminine self-schema cognitive structure through which they process data in a way that emphasizes the unity of and identification with reality. The finding can be interpreted as lending support to theorists who argue for a constructivist understanding of the mystical experience.

Reinterpreting Russian History: Readings, 860-1860s

The first reader in Russian history in almost two decades, this collection includes primary and secondary material never before published in English. Reflecting the latest scholarship on the subject, Reinterpreting Russian History covers a thousand years in four periods: Kievan Rus', the Post-Kievan Experience, the Muscovite Centralized State, and the Russian Empire. Supplemented by over 70 illustrations, selections are introduced by placing them in the context of the work's major themes: state structure, the economy, society, and culture and everyday life. From the multi-ethnic peopling of early Russia to the elite society of the nineteenth century, original sources illuminate such topics as state-building, government and politics, the peasantry and the countryside, clergy and religious communities, and women and gender.

Reasons for abstinence among Moslem, Druze, and Christian adolescents in Israel.

This article describes reasons for abstinence of 1,066 Israeli Arab (Moslem, Druze, and Christian) adolescents in the north of Israel in winter 1994. It analyzes the results by religious group, gender, and location. "Alcohol damages health" and "Do not like the taste/smell" are the most prevalent reasons for not drinking among Christians. "Alcohol damages health" and "Religion intolerant of alcohol use" are most important among Moslems and Druze. "Do not care for it" and "Have seen bad examples of what alcohol can do" are also prominent reasons among Arab respondents. Implications of results for prevention are included.

Risshō Kōseikai and the Bodhisattva way: Religious ideals, conflict, gender, and status

This article concerns conflicts that arise within families associated with Rissho Koseikai, a Japanese New Religion, as a result of the sect’s empha­ sis on “the bodhisattva way. ” It examines the historical back­ ground on this issue in the lives of Sdkyamuni and Nichiren, and partic­ ularly in the life oj Niwano Nikkyd, one of the founders of Rissho Koseikai and (until recently) its president. The problem is then discussed in terms of the aaily lives oj lay believers by examining personal narratives (taiken). Finally, the issues of family conflict are discussed with reference to the life of Naganuma Myoko, Niwano’s co-founder of Rissho Koseikai, and specifically with regard to the issue of divorce. A per so n a l c o m m it m e n t to the p u rs u it o f relig io us goals often requires an extensive investment of time and eneror. One might wish to attain enlightenment, reform a sect or religion, establish a lay orga­ nization, or simply achieve individual peace and happiness; wellknown examples from many of the world religions show that these spiritual endeavors often require one to significantly loosen familial ties or even cut oneself off from mends and family entirely. In the pre­ sent paper I am particularly interested in how this applies to Buddhism, and more specifically to the Japanese Buddhist-inspired New Religion Rissho Koseikai 立正佼成会，since this organization pro­ vides modern examples of conflict generated by religious commit­ ment, and of the ways in which leaders and adherents alike attempt to justify such commitment.

Attitudes on the ethics of abortion, sex selection, and selective pregnancy termination among health care professionals, ethicists, and clergy likely to encounter such situations.

The ethical attitudes of health care providers toward abortion, sex selection, and selective termination of normal and anomalous fetuses in singleton or multiple pregnancies were evaluated by questionnaires distributed to members of the American Society of Human Genetics, the International Fetal Medicine and Surgery Society, the Society of Perinatal Obstetricians, ethicists, and clergy. Demographic characteristics of respondents exhibited a preponderance of men (76%), age > 40 (68%), and of United States residents (82%). Seventy-nine percent of respondents were in the medical profession. Approximately half of the respondents were Protestant, the rest being evenly distributed among Catholic, Jewish, and other religions. Acceptance of abortion for social indication varied by religion and gestational age but not by religious conviction, age, country, or gender of respondent. First-trimester abortion of a normal singleton pregnancy was considered more acceptable than selective termination of normal fetuses in multifetal gestations. Sex selection was considered unethical by most respondents. Selective termination was deemed ethically appropriate in quadruplets or multifetal gestations of more than five fetuses and in multiple pregnancies bearing one anomalous fetus. In the latter situation, acceptance increased with the severity of fetal anomalies and decreased from the first to the third trimester. The medical specialty of respondents was the only independent factor strongly associated with acceptance of selective termination by trimester, indication, and number of fetuses. Acceptance of selective termination among health care professionals appears to reflect not only perceptions of procedure-related risks and benefits in the index pregnancy but also individual training and religious beliefs.