Gender and Religious Work

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2000 by Zoey A. Heyer-Gray

Zoey A. Heyer-Gray [*]

I have a confession to make: I am still occasionally surprised to be studying the sociology of religion, in part because I came to the study of religion by way of one of those academic side roads (that, in my case, seems to have turned into at least a two-lane highway). As a feminist, and a secular and unchurched one at that, my sociological questions and interests have to do with gender and inequality, not, as a rule, religion. Eventually, however, after visiting churches week after week while doing field work for other peoples' research projects, I realized that my challenge would be to raise these same questions in the very particular and unique context in which I was (and would continue to be) immersed: the religious one. Gender thus became, for me, a "way into" the study of the sociology of religion -- and it remains the thread that links my seemingly disparate research agendas.

As a feminist researcher I ask "where are the women?" And, indeed, Neitz asserts that this remains "a necessary question for sociologists who study religion" (1993: 177). She also argues that "the feminist project of asking how any given experience is gendered also continues to be important. Individuals participate in religious organizations and movements as males and females" (p. 177). Individuals also do religious work as males and females. How, then, is religious work gendered? One of the aims of my current research is to begin to answer this question. Another is to begin to explore the kinds of religious work done by women. I ask "where are the women?" and find them all around -- in the pews and the kitchens, at the altar and the organ, in the classrooms and the choir.

My research question -- how is religious work gendered -- is rather explicitly informed by feminist theory, in particular the feminist concerns with gender "as one of the primary axes around which social life is organized" (Kimmel 1993: vii) and with articulating the experiences of women in a meaningful way. More specifically, this research, like so much of the research done by feminists looking at women and work, is very much informed by Smith's work in The everyday world as problematic (1987), in particular her injunction to us to begin our inquiries with the individual's working knowledge of her everyday world (p. 154). This then becomes a point of entry for exploring the larger social and economic processes in which these everyday experiences are in fact embedded (p. 157, 170).

In elaborating her argument, Smith also calls for expanding the concept of work to a "more ample and generous form"(p. 165). She is not alone in doing so. Indeed, from the very earliest studies of housework (Benston 1969; Dalla Costa 1973; Oakley 1974), one of the arguments of feminist researchers has been that it is necessary to expand the concept of work beyond merely paid employment. Why? Because to equate "work" with paid employment effectively makes certain kinds of work, work that is often done by women as housewives and volunteers, "disappear from view"(Daniels 1987: 403).

This brings us to another key feminist task: rendering visible those kinds of work that in fact sustain our everyday worlds -- our households, our communities, our churches -- but that are often difficult to "see" or discern, even occasionally for those who actually do the work.

These two key themes or tasks, expanding the concept of work beyond paid employment and making visible "invisible" work, inform much of the research on women's work. Authors in this area are frequently concerned not only to analyze women's experiences in paid employment, but also to explore activities done by women that are frequently not considered "work" -- at least not by the definition of work that equates it with paid employment -- by either researchers or the women who do the work. Frequently this work is unpaid (e.g., DeVault 1991 on "feeding work" and di Leonardo 1987 on "kin work"), often it is "unseen" (e.g., Hochschild 1983 on "emotion work" and Daniels 1987 on "invisible work").

Of course, there is a third goal, as well, one that is sometimes more implicit than explicit, but nonetheless significant: to garner acknowledgement and respect for the work done by women, often in the hopes that this will lead to a more equitable and just sharing of these tasks. As Daniels notes: "Once we appreciate the significance of all the pieces of emotional and physical work that now do not receive the dignity and moral force of definition as work, we can regard the workers in a new light, appreciating both their efforts and their skills. ... Serious attention to the importance of this work in the social construction of reality may make [the] sharing [of that work] seem more reasonable"( 1987: 413).

While I cast this research in a feminist theoretical framework and it is certainly informed by feminist research on women and work, it is also informed by research in another area of sociological investigation: the sociology of religion. This research is, in fact, an attempt to address particular gaps in this literature.