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Relationships with Gender and Religion

In: Social Issues

Submitted By awoolsey088
Words 1349
Pages 6
In our society, for over a century, more women than men have attended church. In addition, mothers usually have had more responsibility for teaching their children religious beliefs and values than have fathers. These trends, which started in the early nineteenth century, were driven in part by changes in the economy. With the shift to a more urban economy where men’s work took place outside of the household, a lifestyle developed that associated femininity and domesticity with religion. Religion’s place in men’s and women’s family roles has changed over time in relation to economic shifts – and this relationship between gender, religion, and the economy continues to evolve. Original sin in the Garden of Eden was woman’s. She tasted the forbidden fruit which tempted Adam and has been paying for it ever since. In Genesis the Lord said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shall bring forth children and thy desire should be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Sociologists would regard the above quotation as a mythological justification for the position of women in society. However, over time new classifications of religions have arose and offer the genders something different, I will now discuss what organizations attract what gender and why. Religious organizations are mainly male led with the position of priest being barred to females in Catholicism. Where women are represented in religious beliefs, they tend to be in a submissive role or as agents of evil or temptation. Outward religious forms for women are often presented in western societies as symbolic of the ‘other’, for example the wearing of the veil by Muslim women. Yet, although this may be the case, in many religions women form the majority of regular attenders at services. However Rodney stark argues that lower rates of male religiousness is a form of risk

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