Organized religion plays an important role in the lives of many Americans. Despite differences in doctrines, most religions exhibit a common trend in their views about gender roles (Eitzen & Zinn, 2000). Children who receive religious instruction are likely to be socialized to accept certain gender stereotypes, and people who are religious are inclined to endorse gender stereotypes (Robinson et al., 2004). In Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions these stereotypes commonly embrace an emphasis on male supremacy, with God presented as male through language such as Father, He, or King. The biblical conceptualization of Eve as created from Adam’s rib provides a clear endorsement of the gender assumption that females are meant to be secondary to males.
The composition of the leadership of most religious organizations in the United States provides additional evidence of male dominance and of the circumscription of female gender roles. Until 1970 no women were ordained as clergy in any American Protestant denomination. No female rabbis existed until 1972, and the Roman Catholic Church still does not allow female priests.
Movements are afoot to change the traditional patriarchal nature of organized religion in America, as evidenced by several recent trends. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that from 1994 to 2009, the numbers of women clergy in the United States doubled to 73,000 (Lee, 2011). In 2006 Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America—the first woman to lead a church in the history of the worldwide Anglican Communion (Banerjee, 2006). Female enrollment in seminaries and divinity schools has increased dramatically. Efforts are also under way to reduce sexist language in church proceedings and religious writings (Grossman, 2011; Haught, 2009).
We see, then, that family, friends, schools, books, television (and other media, such as movies, magazines, and popular music), and religion frequently help to develop and reinforce traditional gender-role assumptions and behaviors in our lives. We are all affected by gender-role conditioning to some degree, and we could discuss at great length how this process discourages development of each person’s full potential. However, this textbook deals with our sexuality, so it is the impact of gender-role conditioning on this aspect of our lives that we examine in the next section.