Women’s Religious Leadership in a sub-Saharan Setting: Office, Charisma, and Agency

• In Event: 132 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Religion in Global Perspective

Abstract

The western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women’s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women’s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. The study uses a uniquely rich combination of household and institutional survey data with in-depth and focus group interviews to analyze women’s religious authority and leadership in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. We first identify the prevalence and patterns of women’s formal leadership across different denominational groups. We then define and examine four main pathways of women’s church-based authority: office authority gained on their own merit; office authority gained by virtue of association with husband who is or was a congregation leader; charisma-derived authority through prophesizing; and agency-based authority gained through involvement in church women’s group. Finally, we reflect on how these forms of women’s authority both defy and reassert the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing setting.

Author

• Victor Agadjanian, Arizona State University