Gender and Religious Work

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

HOW IS RELIGIOUS WORK GENDERED?

Examining the tasks done by the women of these three churches -- and noticing what men do and do not do -- not only illuminates the kinds of work being done by women, but also begins to give us a sense of how religious work is gendered. Women are, overall, more likely to perform supporting rather than leading roles in the production of the Sunday morning worship service. They are also more likely to undertake the less public roles associated with the worship service (e.g., preparing the altar for the service, ironing the altar linens, etc.). At the same time they perform a whole array of tasks outside of the Sunday morning worship service -- tasks that are key to sustaining the church and to giving church life its particular flavor.

My data at present offer only partial answers to the question of how religious work is gendered. The data also prompt a whole series of related questions. How, for example, does the gendering of religious work -- and religious work itself -- vary over time and by denomination? Answering these questions will not only give us a more complete understanding of gender and religious work, but also of the multitude of ways in which the religious or sacred is experienced in the day to day life of the women and men of the church. Indeed, the way in which something divine or sacred is in fact accomplished or captured by such a seemingly mundane process as "work" -- and how this process is, in turn, gendered -- remains to be explored.

(*.) Direct correspondence to Zoey A. Heyer-Gray, Department of Sociology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211-1100, e-mail: zoeyhg@hotmail.com.

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