Gendered Views Among Young Adults in a Global Study: Male and Female Worldview Prototypes

Research focusing on gender and religion underlines the need to explore how religion is gendered and how religion genders. What is also often called for is an approach that allows for and can register complexity while not ignoring possible gender related differences. In this chapter, we begin with a short overview of the survey results that relate to gender and then turn to the worldview prototypes identified with the help of the Faith Q-Sort. Our primary focus is on the prototypes that are clearly gendered, that is to say, dominated by participants identifying as either male or female. We explore what characterizes these prototypes. Using interview material, we delve into questions of gender brought up by persons of these prototypes and illustrate the complex ways in which questions of gender and worldviews interact. The chapter underlines that gender differences and similarities captured in a survey only tell a small part of the story; that gender and religion are situated in contexts that shape the views on and understandings of both; and that gender and religion are complex notions allowing for creative engagements that can confirm, challenge or reimagine ideas concerning both.