Search results

Abstract
In dialogue with the cross-national scholarship on gender and religion, the study uses a unique combination of rich qualitative and quantitative data from a predominantly Christian rural sub-Saharan setting to examine how churches modify, yet also sustain and even reinforce, patriarchal norms. It shows how churches replace the traditional, extended family-based model of gender inequality with a pseudo-modern model of individualized conjugal dependency. Although men increasingly disengage from the religious space, the growing feminization of that space does not translate into a more gender-egalitarian narrative: the church nurtures women's agency yet also channels it to rearrange and reassert their subservience. To acquire legitimacy, church women are pressured to act as collective articulators, promoters, and guarantors of neo-patriarchal values and orders, and in particular, as builders and saviors of matrimonial integrity and viability. These dynamics reflect and are an integral part of the broader gendered constraints and precarities of contemporary rural society.

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women's entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women's religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women's formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use survey data to test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women's formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women's ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women's religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context.

The relationship between contraceptive use and religion remains a subject of considerable debate. This article argues that this relationship is rooted in context‐specific institutional and organizational aspects of religious belonging and involvement. Drawing upon unique recent data from a population‐based survey of women conducted in a predominantly Christian high‐fertility area of Mozambique, this study examines the connections between religion and contraception from two complementary angles. First, differences in current use of modern contraceptives across main denominational groups are analyzed. The results show higher prevalence of modern contraceptive use among Catholics and, to a lesser extent, traditional Protestants net of other individual‐ and community‐level factors. Second, an analysis of religious involvement reveals that frequent church attendance has a net positive association with modern contraceptive use regardless of denominational affiliation. These findings are situated within the historical context of religious, demographic, and socio‐political dynamics of Mozambique and similar sub‐Saharan settings.

The Soviet legacy of widespread reliance on induced abortion is of critical importance to reproductive trends and policies in post‐Soviet nations, especially as they strive to substitute contraception for abortion. Using data from two Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 1995 and 1999, this study analyzes and compares trends in abortion and contraception, women's attitudes toward abortion, and their perceptions of problems associated with abortion and contraception in Kazakhstan. Despite an overall decline in abortion and an increase in contraceptive use since Kazakhstan's independence in 1991, abortion has remained a prominent part of the country's reproductive culture and practices. This study shows how abortion‐related views reflect the long‐standing ethnocultural differences between the indigenous Kazakhs and Kazakhstan's residents of European roots, as the latter continue to have significantly higher levels of abortion. The study, however, also reveals the internal diversity among Kazakhs with respect to abortion experiences and views, stemming from decades of the Soviet sociocultural influence in Kazakhstan. In addition, the analysis points to some generational differences in views concerning abortion and contraception. Finally, the study demonstrates parallels in attitudes toward abortion and toward contraception, thereby questioning straightforward assumptions about the replacement of abortion with contraception.

This case study of women street vendors in La Paz-El Alto, Bolivia, examines the dynamics of competition and cooperation among this group of poor working women in the context of economic structural adjustment and political pluralization. It is argued that the economic and political reforms not only increase street vendors'insecurities, but may also undermine the potential for their broad-based solidarity and collective actions. Extreme competition in the overcrowded street commerce, diminishing returns, and disillusionment with traditional forms of workers' organization hinder cooperation among street vendors and fragment the social body of the street marketplace, often by further reinforcing its gender, class, ethnoracial, and religious fault lines.

Gender inequality in sub-Saharan urban settings is perpetuated through the differences in men's and women's positions in the labor market. However, rising unemployment and increasing informalization of the economy that result from both the demographic structure and the structural adjustment reforms undermine men's economic advantage by pushing them into low-income and low-prestige "women's" occupations, such as street commerce. Men's entry into such niches of the labor market leads to both de-gendering and re-gendering of the workplace, which in turn questions the broader gender hierarchy and stereotypes and transforms gender relations. I analyze these occupational dynamics and their profound implications for gender identity and relations drawing primarily on in-depth interviews conducted with men street vendors in Greater Maputo, Mozambique, in 1999. The analysis of the qualitative data is complemented with insights from surveys carried out in Mozambique in the second half of the 1990s.

The place of men in reproductive and contraceptive changes and the role of informal social interaction in these processes have become central themes in recent research on fertility change in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. These two themes, however, have been treated separately in the literature, and this study bridges them by examining men's informal communication on family planning matters through a gender lens. This analysis, based on qualitative data collected in Greater Maputo, Mozambique, indicates that although men's communication on these matters is limited in comparison to women's communication, it nonetheless plays an important role in the formation of men's reproductive and contraceptive attitudes and preferences. Gender ideology emerges as a powerful delimiter of men's communication circles and of the information transmitted in those circles. The author argues that gender barriers in peer communication affect individuals' perceptions of reproductive and contraceptive matters and their corresponding preferences and decisions.

Data from three separate studies conducted in Maputo, Mozambique, in 1993 are used to analyse the relationship between the type of social environment in which women work and their fertility and contraceptive use. The analysis finds that women who work in more collectivized environments have fewer children and are more likely to use modern contraception than women who work in more individualized milieus and those who do not work outside the home. Most of these differences persist in multivariate tests. It is argued that collectivized work environments are most conducive to diffusion and legitimation of reproductive innovations. In contrast, individualized environments tend to isolate women and therefore may retard their acceptance of innovative fertility-related behaviour.

Zionistische Kirchen haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten auch in Mosambik Erfolge aufzuweisen. Der Aufsatz analysiert ihre Rolle, Struktur und Mitgliedschaft in der Gesellschaft sowie die Beziehungen zu anderen sozialen Akteuren Maputos. Im Vordergrund steht für die Anhänger dieser Gemeinden die Aussicht auf eine Heilung. Gleichzeitig bieten sie aber für bestimmte Gruppen wie z.B. Frauen die Möglichkeit, traditionelle Beschränkungen zu überwinden. (DÜI-Wgm)