The overall oppressive effect on women's rights of religious fundamentalism has been well documented in the literature. When looking at women's resistance to fundamentalism, it is important to examine not only organized efforts but individual women's agency in subverting or co-opting these movements toward their own ends. Using a series of narratives, the authors discuss four strategies used by Iranian women to negotiate the patriarchal practices of Islamic fundamentalism. These women crafted agency by responding to the demands of family and (...) state through collaboration, acquiescence, co-optation, and subversion. Their narratives of agency show how some women negotiated the economic hardship and gender oppression brought on by the Iranian revolution and how these negotiations affected women's options when filtered through the rhetoric of Islamic fundamentalism. The purpose of the article is to contribute further to the feminist discourse that has moved beyond victimization narratives. (shrink)

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Roman Catholic sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I show how women in the Global South draw on religious imagery to redefine cultural ideals of womanhood and family responsibility. By taking the religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the Congolese sisters I interviewed seemingly betray local expectations regarding women’s responsibility to reproduce and repair the clan. Although sisters’ vows subject them to social ridicule for violating cultural expectations to bear children and support (...) kin, they devise new strategies to negotiate the connection between womanhood and the maternal role of caregiver and nurturer outside of marriage and fertility. In social ministries that affirm their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others, the sisters realize these cultural ideals through a “spiritual motherhood” that transforms their traditional heteronormative obligations. Framing their decision to live outside accepted kinship structures in religious terms mutes the radicalness of this lifestyle and provides religious legitimation for what would otherwise be considered a selfish choice for a woman acting independent of family well-being. In this context, I demonstrate how doing religion is inseparable from doing gender as Catholic sisters embody alternative ways of being a woman in post-colonial Congolese society through their religious practices. (shrink)