Abstract
Background
Many world religions explicitly and/or implicitly promote gender hierarchy and the patriarchal nature of gender roles is a nearly universal theme within these traditions. Notwithstanding the hierarchical patterns often apparent in religiously defined gender roles, complementarity in gender roles is also an essential characteristic of many religions.
Purpose
Religious teachings regarding gender roles may dualistically foster relational health or cause relational harm—depending on the particular teachings and, perhaps most saliently, depending on how religious teachings are applied and lived out within marriages and families. We aim to explore, through interviews with highly religious wives and husbands, the influences and meanings that wives' and husbands' religious beliefs and practices have in connection with their perspectives and lived experience of gender roles in the context of marriage and family life.
Methods
We conducted in-depth, qualitative interviews with 198 individuals using a racially and ethnically diverse sample consisting of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish families (N = 476 individuals). Questions regarding gender within relationships were not included on the interview questionnaire but gender-related issues spontaneously surfaced in many of the interviews. Participants’ comments involving gender were identified using NVivo 12 software and were then qualitatively analyzed using a team-based methodology (Marks in Current Psychol, 34(3): 494-505, 2015).
Results
Two themes addressing the nexus of gender and religion were identified: Theme 1: Sanctity and Complementary Gender Roles in Sexual Relations; Theme 2: Interpreting and Safeguarding Gender Roles. Primary data excerpts are presented to illustrate each theme and implications and applications are discussed.
Conclusions and Implications
Professionals and individuals may examine how religious doctrine is translated into gender attitudes and roles. As individuals understand the many ways highly religious families view gender, gender roles, and gender attitudes, they may be open to examining a wider range of gender interpretations that still remain consistent with their doctrine.
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Change history
02 April 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-022-00483-4
Notes
Full details about the sample are publicly accessible on the American Families of Faith national research project website (https://americanfamiliesoffaith.byu.edu/) and are used here with permission.
To be precise in reporting, five sub-themes were initially identified. Upon further examination, however, we observed that the five core themes fell into two camps conceptually. Thus, the five themes were merged together bringing the total number of themes reported in this article to two.
All names are pseudonyms.
We occasionally use bracketed words or phrases to provide clarifying contextual information found elsewhere in the interview.
All participants’ names have been replaced by pseudonyms to protect identity.
This comment seems to reference Biblical ideas such as those in, among other passages, 1 Peter 3, that reads in part: “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.... For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well (1 Peter 3:1,5–6, KJV).
This comment seems to reference Biblical ideas such as those in Ephesians 5, that reads in part: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh" (Ephesians 5:1,22–31, KJV).
Frequently, it may be best to “interview family members independently for reasons including, but not limited to: fear of disclosure, power differential, desirability effect, and fear of repercussion” (Marks et al., 2018).
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Leavitt, C.E., Allsop, D.B., Price, A.A. et al. Exploring Gender Roles in Highly Religious Families. Rev Relig Res 63, 511–533 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00476-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-021-00476-9