Women's Studies in Religion
WOMEN'S STUDIES IN RELIGION. Women's studies in religion comprise the many and varied scholarly approaches to the study of religion that arise from commitment to the equal dignity of the sexes, that employ the category of gender as a necessary and key variable in the inquiry, and that focus explicitly on the dynamic and reciprocal interplay between religion and women's lives. Taken together these diverse approaches constitute a major body of research that has irreversibly altered the landscape of religious studies.
Women's studies emerged as a new field of inquiry across a number of academic disciplines in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the entry of greater numbers of women into higher education coincided with the second wave of feminism. The largely Western phenomenon of the women's liberation movement politicized women (and men) as they became aware of the historical legacy and cultural pervasiveness of sex discrimination and gender stereotyping. Recognizing these damaging features within their own disciplines, female students and teachers began to explore these and the many other ways that gender matters shape their subjects and the manner in which they are taught and on this basis to develop critiques of and alternative approaches to the subject matter and the methods of its study.
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