THE EMPOWERING EXPERIMENTS OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN: THE CASE OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SPOUSES Cover Image

DİNDAR KADINLARIN GÜÇLENME İMKANLARI: EŞLER ARASI İLİŞKİLER ÖRNEĞİ
THE EMPOWERING EXPERIMENTS OF RELIGIOUS WOMEN: THE CASE OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN SPOUSES

Author(s): İhsan Toker
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Islam studies, Sociology of Religion
Published by: Sakarya üniversitesi
Keywords: Religion and women; Muslim family; religious feminism; empowerment; qawamah; modernity; fundamentalism;

Summary/Abstract: The relations between spouses generally have been hierarchical in religious cultures and structures. But today various empirical studies indicate that, in spite of these negative conditions, women become religious agents referring to a number of religious arguments in their perceptions about the roles within family and especially in their attitudes towards husbands. This study examines the empowering experiments of women in religion in a limited context, in their statuses and roles inside family against structural characteristics of religions. In this respect, notion of “qawamah” is a focus point. Muslim women developed strategies and new interpretations about the qawamah. As a result, they kept themselves away from hierarchical religious opinions and preferred more egalitarian understandings. These suggest that religion can an empowering factor in the life of women.

  • Issue Year: 10/2008
  • Issue No: 17
  • Page Range: 1-15
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Turkish