Religion, Gender, and Development

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Is religion an obstacle or opportunity for women's empowerment? Religion is often seen as institutionalizing and perpetuating patriarchy and thus operating in contradiction to women's agency, rights, and equality. This course will grapple with the tensions and contradictions between the imperative of gender justice foregrounded in the Sustainable Development Goals and religions' competing conceptions of women's roles. The course will overcome some of this dichotomizing of secular and religious paradigms of development by looking at the theoretical and practical work of religious feminists. In responding to the question "is religion an obstacle or opportunity for women's empowerment?" we will debate why feminists and religious actors are hesitant to collaborate on development agenda and what does this indicate about the potential relations between development and religious reform. We will also examine feminist and queer theologies to the degree they contribute to reimagining international development praxis and the intersections of feminist theologies and environmental and decolonial justice.