From the church kitchen to the church boardroom: women’s continuing quest for gender recognition

ID:	HARP-396
Title:	From the church kitchen to the church boardroom: women’s continuing quest for gender recognition
Source:	Journal of Eastern Townships Studies , (16) Spr’00 pg 71-75
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	2000
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, decision making, gender equality, human rights, religion, woman, civil and political rights, assembly and association
Abstract:	This study examines how one group of women, who constituted themselves with interests centered on organized religious and social reform work, engaged with the state to contest its meanings of women’s proper sphere. The state arena where these contested interests took place is the church. We will show that historically, the state and the church have constituted women’s role in religion in a strictly nurturing capacity where they served the social and moral needs of their congregations. This construction excluded them from formal, masculine decision-making and power positions within the church. Women contested this meaning of their lives and the division of society into private and public domains by including a women’s rights perspective into their social activities. The result is that a number of women have begun to redefine the boundaries of the feminine to include themselves as agents of social change along-side men in the church hierarchies and ultimately, throughout society.
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