Women and the Catholic Church: Negotiating Identity and Agency

by Tracy McEwan, Dawn Llewellyn (Editor), Sonya Sharma (Editor), Sîan Hawthorne (Editor)

Overview

How do Catholic women make sense of their involvement in a church with restrictive gendered roles and responsibilities? Is there a vision for church which might provide Catholic women with a community of hope, justice and flourishing?

Introducing a new methodological approach to studying Catholic women, this open access book provides fresh insights into women's religious and spiritual experiences and church participation. Drawing on a case study of Australian Catholic women, Tracy McEwan develops the notion of “technologies of Catholicism” to explore the ways in which women shape their religious and secular identities against the backdrop of a masculinist Church.

This book is a key resource for those seeking to understand women's struggle to negotiate the impact of Catholicism and its oppressive gendered theologies. It introduces the term “everyday spiritual abuse” to explain the harm Catholic women experience on a day-to-day basis as they negotiate multiple material, spiritual, and structural inequalities. It proposes an alternative feminist model of church, which is contained and produced in the herstories of women.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350424821
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/24/2025
Series:	Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Dawn Llewellyn is Associate Professor of Religion and Gender at the University of Chester, UK.

Sonya Sharma is Associate Professor of Sociology at University College London, UK.

Sîan Hawthorne is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Religion and Politics at SOAS, University of London, UK.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction
2: Identity and authority
3: Magisterial ecclesiology: Virgin, bride, mother
4: Theorising power/knowledge for a feminist study of women in Catholicism
5: Invented identities
6: Enacting agency
7: The consequences of a lack of recognisability
8: A place where Catholic women might flourish
Afterword
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book is an important contribution to critical feminist theology. McEwan identifies the key issues that harm women in the Catholic system and examines brilliantly Catholic women's potential for agency in the power regime of Catholicism.” —Ute Leimgruber, Universität Regensburg, Germany

“Pope Francis' Synodal project has evaporated into irrelevance for women of the Catholic Church who had hoped for a breakthrough in misogynistic magisterial resistance. It's devastating consequences in the lived lives of Catholic women are chronicled here. This book is a warning to the Magisterium of the anger and frustration building among the vast majority of faithful who believe in gender equality, see it as God given and its denial as utterly wasteful of Gods gifts.” —Mary McAleese, Former President of Ireland and Chancellor of the University of Dublin, Ireland

“Tracy McEwan utilises social science and a keen understanding of religion to explain the systemic marginalization of Catholic women in church, carefully analysing the often painful stories of Gen X women. As these women claim power and authority to be religious on their own inclusive terms, the spiritual landscape is changing before our eyes. This landmark study leaves no doubt that the Catholic Church is in serious danger of extinction if women remain marginalized.” —Mary E. Hunt, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual, USA

From the Publisher