Tried something new in "Theorizing Religion" today, giving the students a breathless 2016 Pew study called "The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World." It seemed a good way to introduce quantitative surveys on religion and their problems, as well as to start thinking about how religion is gendered in theory and in practice. To my surprise, most students reported enjoying; it resonated with their experience. Pew's American Protestant metrics of religiosity (affiliation, importance of religion, attendance at weekly worship, daily prayer, belief in heaven/hell) and participation in the
fantasy of monolithic world religions didn't bother them as much as the assumption that everyone is either a man or a woman. And only one noticed that the discovered "gender gap" is in fact pretty small, especially outside the US, and that the writer of the report seems a little disappointed not to have found something bigger.
There's work to do! Next we tackle "world religions," Eurocentrism and American exceptionalism... and eventually we'll be able to loop back to how gender is formed (differently) by religious traditions, and how different experiences of gender identity/fluidity might express themselves religiously. But I'll be able to be a better guide on the journey knowing that thinking of religiosity and gender in terms of "nature vs. nurture," as the Pew study does, is interesting to them.
