Feminist Inquiry in the Sociology of Religion 281
separate domain of women could be – and was – dismissed by the priest and vestry.
Women who crossed the boundaries into male domains experienced sexual teasing
and harassment. Some women successfully cross the boundaries, but “at the expense
of risking being labeled a man” (1997: 37). Manville’s study suggests the fruitfulness of
looking at the ways organizational practices produce and reproduce gender.^7
Protestant Evangelical Women
Outside the Protestant mainline, ordination of women is less common, and studies
are likely to focus on members rather than clergy (but see Wessinger 1993). A number
of important ethnographies in the 1990s, beginning with Stacey and Gerard (1990)
have helped readers to understand women’s complicated participation in the evangel-
ical cultures. For example, Ozorak (1996) explored the question of whether women
felt empowered by religious participation. She found that women did not have access
to power in conventional ways through religious participation, but that they received
valued relational rewards from participation. With case studies of two large congrega-
tions from Calvary Chapel and Hope Chapel parachurch movements, inGodly Women
(1998) Brenda Brasher helps us understand how these women understand their partic-
ipation in a context of male dominance. She finds that women accept gender polarity
in congregations as a whole and establish separate women’s ministries. But they claim
that gender does not matter when it comes to God’s message; the preaching, teaching,
and healing is for everyone. Marie Griffith’s (1997) study of Women’s Aglow Fellow-
ship,God’s Daughters, describes the changing meaning of “submission” for evangelical
women when most of them, by the 1990s, were not full time homemakers.
Gender and American Jews
In 1991, Lynn Davidman and Deborah Kaufman published much cited books about
newly Orthodox Jewish women, in which feminist authors asked how modern women
could make sense out of living in the Orthodox world. In contrast, Dufour (2000) looks
at how women who identify as both Jewish and feminist “sift through” their options
to create identities, combining elements of Jewish and feminist practices in such a
way that they experience minimal conflict between the two (see also Davidman 1994).
Jacobs also looks at the construction of Jewish identities, although in a very different
context. In her research on the modern descendants of crypto-Jews, Jacobs investigates
the gendered relationship between ethnicity and spiritual development (2000), and the
role of women in preserving crypto-Jewish culture (1996).
Other researchers have examined issues of conflict among Jews over gender roles.
In one extreme case, it resulted in a schism in a synagogue (Zuckerman 1997). Hartman
and Hartman (1996) analyze data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey to
examine inequality between American male and female Jews, according to their degree
of participation and their denominational affiliation. One interesting finding is that
gender inequality between spouses does not vary by denomination. In her study of con-
servative Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, and Orthodox Jewish women, Manning
(^7) See also Zoey Heyer-Gray’s (2000) suggestive comment on the religious work women do.