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ABSTRACT
While the percentage of religiously unaffiliated women is growing in the West, little is known about the relationship between atheism and feminism. This article redresses the gap by exploring women’s identification with atheism and feminism. The central argument draws on qualitative interview data from the UK, Australia, the US and Poland and emphasizes the role of atheism as a background identity marker through which female subjectivity is enacted in everyday life. The findings are two-fold: first, atheism and feminism are both devalued identities when embraced by women; and second, identifying as an atheist affords the participants an impetus to invent a new vocabulary to account for their identity. In conclusion, I argue that atheism provides a catalyst for the post-feminist discourse of independence, empowerment and freedom of choice as the participants construct narratives of ‘reasonable feminism’.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The report pertains to the US data only. For a nuanced analysis of the gender gap in religiosity globally, see Pew Research Center (Citation2016).
2. Most extant surveys ask questions about ‘nones’ (Brown, 2013, p. 229), and they rarely break the subcategories down by gender. The notable exception is atheistcensus.com, an online voluntary survey set up by the Atheist Alliance. For a critical analysis of the methodology and general usefulness of the census, see http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/2013/demographics-of-atheism/.
3. Internally, the movement varied wildly as it housed atheists, pantheists, deists, agnostics and spiritualists.
4. See Dyhouse (Citation2014) for examples of the moral panics around femininity since the nineteenth century to the present day.
5. To complicate the matter further, there is evidence that ‘men who are more liberal, hold less traditional gender roles, and endorse less right-wing authoritarian values are actually more likely to identify as atheist than their traditionally gendered male counterparts’ (Brewster, Citation2013, p. 512).
6. Skype interviewing comes with its own technological and ethical challenges, but it allowed me to overcome the geographical and financial implications of conducting international research (Hanna, Citation2012; Seitz, Citation2015).
7. This was the case for the interviewees in all four countries.
8. The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang defines feminazi as both ‘a committed feminist’ and a ‘strong-willed’ woman (Barret, Citation2006, p. 105).
9. Julia Gillard is the former Australian Prime Minister (2010–2013). She was the first ever woman in the role and her term was marked by gendered media coverage where the focus was on Gillard’s private life instead of her politics (Stevenson, Citation2013). Gillard is also an ‘out’ atheist, she is not married and does not have children, all of which became the subject of media interest.
10. ‘Strength’ is not only gendered but also racialized. The richest body of literature on the discourses of strength and femininity comes from feminist scholars who specialize in race and gender. For example, ‘being strong’ is a culturally specific expectation placed on Black women, which casts them as ‘stark and deviant opposites of weak and appropriately feminine white women’ (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Citation2007, p. 31). For White women ‘being strong’ can be used to cast their femininity into question, both on the mental and a physical level.
11. The speech received praise outside of Australia, but the reactions in the country were mixed and Gillard was accused of playing the ‘gender card’. The full transcript of the speech can be found here https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121010-27c36.html.
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Marta Trzebiatowska
Marta Trzebiatowska is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Aberdeen. Her research and teaching interests include religion and nonreligion, gender and sexuality, migration as well as social theory. She has published in Journal of Contemporary Religion, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Sociology, Feminist Theology, Fieldwork in Religion and Secularism and Nonreligion. Her book, Why Are Women More Religious Than Men? (Oxford, 2012, with Steve Bruce), critiques competing theories of women’s greater religiosity. She is the co-editor of Social Theory and the Question of Religion (Ashgate, 2014). Her current project investigates the lived experience of atheism in different cultural contexts.