This Far and No Further? Religious Women and the State – A Suggested Typology of Strategies

Religious individuals accept that they answer to a higher authority and that their actions are not governed exclusively by their own wants and needs. In this respect, they are well-versed in coping with reality. However, this does not mean that they do not voice dissent or wish to create change. Calls for change are certainly prevalent among religious feminists since the late 20th century. But when does this happen and how? Religious feminists of many faiths are politically and socially active. However, there is a lack of scholarly tools with which to understand the relationship between religious feminists and the state. Can this relationship be viewed in terms of coping, resilience and resistance? Is there a point where religious feminists refuse to accept their current situation and resist the place allocated to them by either the religious establishment, the state or both? In this context, the paper asks: How do religious feminists relate to their religious establishment? How do they relate to the state? Are there strategies they are more likely to employ when they do interact with the state? When are these used? When is a particular strategy more likely to surface? Can we categorize strategies? While current scholarship does not supply concepts and terms, it is possible to borrow terms from other disciplines in order to classify strategies used by religious feminists in their interactions with the state. Using the Israeli case, the proposed paper will propose a typology of strategies used by religious feminists vis-à-vis the religious establishment and where expectations from the state fit into this dynamic in terms of coping, resilience and resistance.