Religious Diversity, Gender and Citizenship

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, Europe, has been going through a diversification of its religious landscape in a context of individualization and of religious bricolage and of migrations. This diversity is both a growing reality and a challenge for European democracies in font of the changes of religious landscape. . The issue of gender, is one of the major stakes of religious and political tensions, linked to religious diversity, namely in terms of religious freedom and fundamental rights of women and sexual minorities. These problematics concern all the religious confessions, particularly the conservative or radical trends which disagree with the principes of equality and individual freedom. These oppositions are not only religious but also political, social and cutural. The gender issues cross all these domains of the society and therefore, clearly points out the complexity of the links between them, particularly the interactions between the sexual issues, the ethical and the religious diversities. Against this background, this panel will provide new knowledge about the multifaceted role of gender for understanding religious tensions and religious coexistence, in contemporary times, in a citizenship perspective.