Gender, religion and citizenship

Gender and sexuality are among the most intensely conflictual aspects of religion around the world. Religion is a key contributor to the continuation of inequalities linked to gender and sexual orientation, and therefore also to unequal citizenship between women and men, and between heterosexual and LGBTQ+ people. Moreover, religion is deeply implicated in the history of nations in the Global North and their colonial rule and imperialist expansion, with long-lasting stereotyping and othering of indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and people of colour, including of their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. While religion can provide limitations and barriers to equal citizenship, it can also provide resources and opportunities for everyday citizenship practices such as in the mobilisation for political demands. This chapter revisits existing scholarship on gender, religion and citizenship and outlines a new multidimensional, multi-level conceptualization of religious citizenship that foregrounds how religion and citizenship intersect with gender and other identities and structures of inequality. It proposes a new definition of religious citizenship that forefronts its legal-political, participatory, embodied, material, affective, and care dimensions, while also discussing select empirical cases from around the world that demonstrate the entanglement of these six dimensions of religious citizenship.