Role of Women in Religion

Role of Women in Religion Throughout History

Women throughout time have contributed a lot in the history of religion. Many movements and organizations have been formed which focus and devote time for the ideals of religion, may it be any kind of religion. The participation of women in religion, as history tells, has proven that women somehow are more devoted than men to the beliefs and faith in their gods. How women have shown this can be witnessed from the number of women personalities that were known because of their religious attitude and strong stand for their religion.

The success of most religious movements is usually credited to women. It is because of the hard work and dedication that women impart to their religious movement. Inger Furseth, in her online article Sociology of Religion: Women's Role in Historic Religious and Political Movements indicate the following on how women work for religious movements and some reasons why women are active in religion.

A ideological inducements for women to participate and available roles for women in the organizational structures are important explanations for female participation in the religi ous movements; female participation within the religious movements led to more widespread diffusion and recruitment; and women provided the religious movements with a relatively high degree of stability, because they enabled the use of family formation as a movement strategy and secured continuity through the socialization of new members.

From the role of women in the early Christianity, Muslim religion, Buddhism, or any other religion, researches and studies have revealed the contributions of women in the successful growth of religion through time. Although gender role divisions has been eminent among men and women, especially in the past decades and centuries, which is sometimes the conception why women are active in religion, there are still great number of rationales and explanations why women, through time, have become the major participants of religious movements and organizations. The following sections will try to discuss several motivations why women continuously participate in the development of religion as well as the roles that they performed in the spread of different religion worldwide.

Women in Religion Throughout History

There has been a number of information sources where the participation and contribution of women and religion throughout history can be traced back and analyze. Furseth (2005, Online) indicates two theories that social science literature reveals. They are the following.

The influences of social culture and traditions on the way of life and religious responses of men and women.

Furseth categorizes this further into two groups:

Based on gender role socialization theories

Based on structural location theories

The above theory indicates how the past culture and how the view of society on the role of men and women influences men and women's view on religion. The gender role socialization theory stresses the roles that were believed that should be performed by men and women affect their outlook to religion. For instance, it is known that in the past, women are not allowed to become part of the workforce. Their role is to take care of their family and homes. Thus, because they have nothing more important things to spend time to aside from their family and homes, religion became a vocation to them. If the thought of women joining the workforce is not welcome to the society of the past, religious movements and organizations are not prohibited. This is because the society of the past, as the present society continuously does, believes in faith in gods and traditions and heritage of religious way of life. However, in the part of men, because they are busy with working for their family, dividing their time for other things such as religious movements is not usual.

The individual characteristics of men and women

This theory relates to the major differences in the personal characteristics of men and women. The roles that women perform in religion throughout history were basically caused by the factor that women are alleged with traits that they are more religious than men.

The roles of women in religion are given with importance throughout history. As indicated by Inger Furseth in her article,

Exceptions are found in the work of Stark (1997), who attempted to demonstrate that women's participation helped early Christianity to grow, and Finke and Stark (1994) who claimed that the lack of women was a barrier to churching colonial America.

Aside from these roles that women served in religion, their purpose in the religious movements and orgranizations served more important functions to the coming society which are evident and apparent in today's society. Stark (Furseth, Online) enumerated two of them as follows.

A relatively high rates of intermarriage existed between Christian women and pagan men, which generated many "secondary" conversions to Christianity higher birthrate among Christian women contributed to the successful growth of the early church.

The relevance of women in the history of women have dated back several centuries ago when European women have played roles in religious movements that are exposed to the public. One was revealed when women in the Hague movement centuries ago have held high positions in the religious organization. They had the responsibilities of traveling from place to preach to people. Furseth indicates that This phenomenon is especially evident in the Hauge movement. Many women in this movement held positions as leaders and counselors. As well, several Haugean women travelled as preachers (Molland 1979, I: 81-83). It was not common for women to travel at the time, especially alone. No maps existed, roads were poor or non-existent, and traveling was risky (Ryall and Veiteberg 1991: 140). The Haugean women frequently suffered hardships and assaults to preach the word of God.

One example of a women personality who performed such hardships was Bergitte Hansson who performed the duties of her preacher husband when needed.

Role of Women of Today in Religion

Today, the role of women in religion is amazing. Women perform religious tasks that men, aside from preachers and priests, would rarely do. Many of today's women hold responsibilities, aside from their family and house responsibilities, that benefit many people. Some of them are the following.

Serving in missionary works such as helping the poor and the needy. One example of religious woman who performed this responsibility was Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa went from place to place, nation to nation, to provide help to the poor and the sick. Even without placing too much care for her own health, considering that she served many sick people, she continued her mission up to her death.

Serving as leaders in religious classes and youth organizations. These days, many women contribute their spare time teaching the youth about religion. Such occurs mostly after Sunday mass. They lead the youths in living their lives according to the will of God, or any gods that other religions believe.

Many women of today lead religious tasks of helping the needy to increase people's morale and help then gain the feeling of self-worth.

They help in religious campaigns of encouraging people take priesthood or sisterhood vocations. Religious women helped in extending religious movements to many parts of the world.

The most obvious role of women in religion perhaps can be seen in the roles played by nuns to church and to the society. Nuns do not only serve the church for their religious beliefs but also the society. It is apparent these days that nuns do not just stay in church as they probably had been in the past centuries. These days, nuns play dual roles in both the church and the people. Their response to religion is not only to serve the church but to be able to communicate the religious way of life to people. These days, many nuns are part of educational institutions. Their mission of serving God is put into reality by also serving the society.

In the past, women have roles in religion that can be categorized into two subtypes as indicated by the Sociumas Online. They are as follows.

The subordinate female religious role along the lines of the New Testament admonition for women to "keep silent" in the church and refrain from having any religious authority over men; and the specialised religious role for women as best typified in the female monastic orders within Roman Catholicism

The traditional role of women in religion is still present in today's religious communities and organizations. One of the provisions of such role for women is to perform feminine tasks, as indicated in Sociumas Online. Some of them are, as nurturing and healing the sick caring for the poor and needy or teaching the young in schools