Contemporary women's movement and the future of the American family.

This book addresses feminism in several religions and explores how theology speaks to women's experiences in the family, in relationships, at work, in politics, and in education, while also addressing atheist viewpoints and experiences.

During the last three decades of the twentieth century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. Ministers, legislators, and laypeople came together to fight abortion, gay rights, and major feminist objectives. They supported private Christian schools, home schooling, and a strong military. Family values leaders like Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and James Dobson became increasingly supportive of the Republican Party, which accommodated the language of family values in its platforms and campaigns. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians. Conservative evangelicals saw traditional gender norms as crucial in cultivating morality. They thought these gender norms would reaffirm the importance of clear lines of authority that the social revolutions of the 1960s had undermined. In the 1970s and 1980s, then, evangelicals founded Christian academies and developed homeschooling curricula that put conservative ideas about gender and authority front and center. Campaigns against abortion and feminism coalesced around a belief that God created women as wives and mothers—a belief that conservative evangelicals thought feminists and pro-choice advocates threatened. Likewise, Christian right leaders championed a particular vision of masculinity in their campaigns against gay rights and nuclear disarmament. Movements like the Promise Keepers called men to take responsibility for leading their families. Christian right political campaigns and pro-family organizations drew on conservative evangelical beliefs about men, women, children, and authority. These beliefs—known collectively as family values—became the most important religious agenda in late twentieth-century American politics.

Rita M. Gross offers an engaging survey of the changes feminism has wrought in religious ideas, beliefs, and practices around the world, as well as in the study and understanding of religion itself. "This book will be an important resource for all ongoing work in feminist teaching and research in religion."-Rosemary Radford Ruether

An in-depth history of selected New Religions that highlights the roles of women in their founding and continual practice Women in New Religions offers an engaging look at women’s evolving place in the birth and development of new religious movements. It focuses on four disparate new religions—Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, The Family International, and Wicca—to illuminate their implications for gender socialization, religious leadership and participation, sexuality, and family ideals. Religious worldviews and gender roles interact with one another in complicated ways. This is especially true within new religions, which frequently set roles for women in ways that help the movements to define their boundaries in relation to the wider society. As new religious movements emerge, they often position themselves in opposition to dominant society and concomitantly assert alternative roles for women. But these religions are not monolithic: rather than defining gender in rigid and repressive terms, new religions sometimes offer possibilities to women that are not otherwise available. Vance traces expectations for women as the religions emerge, and transformation of possibilities and responsibilities for women as they mature. Weaving theory with examination of each movement’s origins, history, and beliefs and practices, this text contextualizes and situates ideals for women in new religions. The book offers an accessible analysis of the complex factors that influence gender ideology and its evolution in new religious movements, including the movements’ origins, charismatic leadership and routinization, theology and doctrine, and socio-historical contexts. It shows how religions shape definitions of women’s place in a way that is informed by response to social context, group boundaries, and identity.

Women and their roles within families must be understood within the context of ethnic traditions, religion, and culture. Women, Families, and Feminist Politics: A Global Exploration combines all of these aspects to evaluate the similarities and differences of women around the world. Readers will learn about diverse theories relating to women and their familial roles, the different categories of feminism, and how cultures and ethnic traditions shape and sometimes restrict a woman’s identity. Using feminist and sociocultural theories to critically examine the role of adult women within their families, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics offers ideas and suggestions on what has to be done in order for all of women’s experiences and concerns to be valued and looked upon as important. In addition to providing you with an understanding of how customs and cultures contribute to societal standards set for women, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics discusses several factors that contribute to the formation of women’s roles and identity, including: the economic situation of the family and the country in which the woman lives (a developed or developing country) cultural diversity in monogamous heterosexual marriage relations and specific marriage traditions, such as dowries family structures, such as nonnuclear, extended, polygamous, mixed religion relationships, mixed race relationships, or same-sex relationships reproduction and sexual standards in relation to religion, government policies, and world population gender equity in the workplace and programs for women in global development the health care needs of women and how they vary depending on culture, political philosophies, and resources women and violence in societal and family contexts, from war rapes, female circumcision, and footbinding to battery and sexual harassment Women, Families, and Feminist Politics looks at the daily challenges and concerns of adult women within the context of family to help you understand the different needs of women in relation to their culture and ethnic background. Focusing on the importance of views concerning the meaning of women’s social status, power, and success, Women, Families, and Feminist Politics contains case studies and statistical data that identify critical issues pertaining to you personally and to all women throughout the world. By understanding how women’s families help shape their identities, you will be able to learn about the vast experiences of women and the inequalities we have yet to overcome.

The Handbook of Feminist Family Studies presents the important theories, methodologies, and practices in feminist family studies. The editors showcase feminist family scholarship, providing both a retrospective and a prospective overview of the field and creating a scholarly forum for interpretation and dissemination of feminist work.