Summary:
Understanding Generation A: interim report from ESRC funded study
Dr Abby Day
Senior Research Fellow
University of Kent
Researching the faith lives of girls and women has been central to my work since 1999,
beginning with a short study of a women’s prayer group 1 , done as part of my Masters at
Lancaster and a version published three years later, Doing Theodicy in the Journal of
Contemporary Religion. This was followed by long- term fieldwork in England from 2003
until the now,
2
made possible through three separately-funded studies through the Arts and
Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Councils. The
longitudinal studies spanned three generations of people ranging in age from 14 to 84, from
different social classes and evenly split by gender. My current project, again funded by
Economic and Social Research Council, focuses exclusively on Anglican women born in the
1920s and 30s, the cohort I have named ‘Generation A’. In keeping with the theme of this
conference I focus on women of faith, looking beyond a narrow conception of faith as ‘belief’
alone. My research concludes that exploring the interaction of different dimensions of belief
1
Abby Day, ‘Doing Theodicy: an Empirical Study of a Women’s Prayer Group’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 20/3
(2005): pp. 343-356.
2
Abby Day, ‘Doing Qualitative Longitudinal Religious Research’, in
Linda Woodhead (ed.), Innovative Methods in the Study of Religion (Oxford, 2012) pp forthcoming
and belonging reveal a richer nature of religiosity. That was why I developed an interpretive
model to focus not just on the content of belief (usually dealt with by sociologists by asking
short questions such as ‘do you believe in God’) but belief’s resources, practices, salience
and functions. To study belief longitudinally, new elements of place and time were
incorporated. This holistic, organic, multi-dimensional framework developed the research
beyond standard sociological techniques to an enhanced anthropological approach
introducing a performative, dynamic element. This process, which I termed ‘performative
belief’, refers to a neo-Durkheimian construct where belief is a lived, embodied performance
brought into being through action. Within a social context are social relationships:
performative belief plays out through the relationships in which people have faith and to
which they feel they belong. Belief in social relationships is performed through social
actions of both belonging and excluding.
Applying this theory to gender is instructive. Women in Euro American countries are
apparently more religious than men, and older women more religious than younger women.
That generalised statement seems to be supported by large-scale quantitative data on
Christianity in the UK: about 40 % of Church of England monthly attendees are women aged
60 or over - twice the number of men of a similar age. 3 Older women are represented
disproportionately: 4 per cent of the general population attends the Anglican Church
regularly; about 10 per cent of women over 60 attend and less than 2 per cent of women
under 60. Evidence suggests that this is a unique generation that will not be replaced: women
under the age of 60 attend church much less often than their mothers and their participation
has not been increasing over time. Such behaviour sometimes leads scholars to conclude that
women are more religious than men. That is claim supported by some research, as described
above, but leaving a counter-argument unexplored: if, indeed, women are ‘more religious’
3
British Social Attitudes: the 24th Report, (London: Sage, 2008).
than men, how do we account for widespread evidence that men exclusively occupy the most
senior strata of religious institutions, and are permitted, unlike women, to be priests, imams,
or monks in most religious institutions. Feminist inroads have been made in liberal forms of
Judaism and Christianity, but these have been recent, hard-won battles that have caused
schisms on an international scale as men have resisted such intrusions. Religious power and
authority has been and generally remains a male domain. When, therefore, people suggest
that women are more religious than men they must be restricting their analysis to certain
behaviours and kinds of lay religiosity. This lack of a definition of what is construed as
religious and what may be explained by gender may speak to a wider unease about gender in
the sociology and anthropology of religion.
4
Only quantitative surveys asking such limited
and thin questions as, for example, ‘do you believe in God’ provide evidence of more female
than male. I will argue here that not just qualitative research but in particular rich
ethnographic research is necessary to reveal other explanatory values, such as relatedness,
power structures, and sociality, which may better explain gender discrepancies. What may be
at stake is the kind of religiosity that is valued and then accorded to men or women.
4
Linda Woodhead, ‘Feminism and the Sociology of Religion: from Gender-blindness to Gendered Difference’, in Richard
Fenn (ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion (Oxford, 2001), pp. 67—84; Day, Theodicy: pp. 343—356;
Fiona Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Oxford, 2006); Fenella Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity
(Durham and London, 2007).