1

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN? WHERE DO WE NEED

TO Go?: WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN
RELIGION AND FEMINIST THEOLOGY
RITA M. GROSS

As someone who helped found the disciplines of women's studies in religion and
feminist theology and as someone who has written a great deal on these topics, I
have a long vantage point from which to view our concerns. In this essay, I seek
more to review the essentials of our disciplines than to blaze new methodological
trails. That is a task for younger scholars who have the freshness that I had in 1967
when I wrote my first paper on women and religion, which was then unexplored
and novel territory that quickly became controversial (see Gross and Ruether
2001 Ir. 39-44). I suggest that it is instructive to ascertain what we have clearly estab-
lished as scholars of women's studies and feminist theologians, what has been
suggested but is not yet firmly in place, and what needs to be integrated into our
scholarly and theological agendas. I will be as concerned about how best to
maintain and advance our agendas, given the politics of academia, as I will be
about purely scholarly concerns.

WHAT WE HAVE ESTABLISHED: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN MODELS

OF HUMANITY
In my view, the single most important accomplishment of women's studies and the
feminist movement has been to change the model of humanity with which many
people and many scholars operate. There is no question that I was socialized, both
as a human being and a scholar, to think with an androcentric model of humanity.
Widespread use of the term 'androcentric' is itself a product of the conceptual rev-
olution initiated by women's studies.1 Before that time, the term had been rarely
used because it was not understood that there was any other way to conceptualize
humanity or that we all operated with a model of humanity that put men in the
centre of attention as normal and normative human beings and women on the
periphery as a 'special case', and a bit abnormal. Such a mode of language and
scholarship and such a model of humanity were normal and without alternatives.
Only when we began to ask why women so rarely appeared on the pages of the
books we read, even in descriptive accounts of religion, did we begin to figure out

1. According to information provided by Ursula King, the term 'androcentric' was invented in
1903 by a US sociologist, Lester F. Ward, in his comments on Bachofen's gynocentric theories
about early society. But it did not come into widespread usage until the women's studies movement
and, to my knowledge, the term was reinvented rather than borrowed from Ward's work.

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 RITA M. GROSS

that the model of humanity we had imbibed from our culture made women invisi-
ble or that there were alternatives to that model of humanity.
I will never forget how7 hard and long I struggled as a graduate student to figure
out why all the scholarship on women and religion seemed so inadequate and
unbalanced, until one day when I realized the problem was that whenever women
were studied, a rare occurrence, in most cases they were studied as objects in an
androcentric universe. I also realized that wre would never get anywhere in under-
standing women until we changed that basic methodological assumption. These
things wrere already quite clear to me in 1968, when I took the preliminary exami-
nations for my doctorate. I will also never forget the reaction of one of the
members of my committee: 'You're an intelligent person. Don't you understand
that the generic masculine covers and includes the feminine, thereby making it
unnecessary to focus specifically on women!' The distinction between androcentric
models of humanity and what I called 'androgynous models of humanity' 2 for
many years is clear and explicit in my doctoral dissertation, most of which was
written in 1974, and is very explicit in one of my early publications, wTitten in 1975
and finally published in 1977. In that paper, I suggested that most topics in the
field of religious studies could benefit from applying an androgynous model of
humanity to them (see Gross 1977: 7-19).
The relative success of this conceptual revolution can be measured by the fact
that the generic masculine has largely gone out of style, even in many popular
media, and that many general accounts of religion, such as introductory textbooks,
are gender balanced. Of course, there are holdouts, such as conservative religious
groups who refuse to change their liturgies to gender-inclusive language, but it is a
significant victory that most academic journals demand non-sexist language,
textbook publishers solicit gender-inclusive manuscripts, and daily newspapers
avoid the generic masculine. In my view, these changes in more popular and more
widely accessible venues are more important and more significant than the rather
considerable body of women's studies scholarship that has accumulated in the last
thirty years. Such changes indicate real changes in cultural consciousness, whereas
scholarly literature usually reaches a far smaller audience. I do not think we can say
too often or too clearly that this fundamental shift of consciousness is the most
basic and fundamental point of women's studies and feminist theology.
However, a major problem remains. We have definitely succeeded in highlight-
ing women's lives and concerns and in making women much more vividly present
than they were before the advent of women's studies. Unfortunately, we often end
up preaching to the choir. Courses, talks, and books with the w7ords 'women's
studies' or 'feminism' in the title, of which there are now many, are usually
attended or read almost exclusively by women. I often tell the story of the man
who, when asked whether he was going to attend my upcoming dharma pro-
gramme on 'Women and Buddhism', answered, 'Now why would /be interested in
2. I used the term 'androgynous' to mean 'both male and female', its clear etymological
meaning, rather than the more popular meaning of'vague and undifferentiated sexuality'. That
usage still prevails in my 1996 book, Feminism find Religion: An Jnlmduclinn. However, because that
terminology was not adopted by others in the field, I have now given up my preferred terms and
use the more cumbersome 'gender neutral and gender inclusive models of humanity' instead.

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 WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN RELIGION

thatV His comment illustrates the situation well. Women are put in the odd and
uncomfortable position of carrying the whole burden of human genderedness by
ourselves, thus freeing men to go about business as usual, unencumbered by
gender issues and gender concerns, as unknowledgeable as ever about the content
of women's studies. Men often do not regard the term 'gender' as something that
applies to them; they regard it as applying mainly or exclusively to women. Thus,
the presence of women's studies and feminism, by themselves, do not solve the
problem of androcentrism. Women now are regarded as truly human rather than
something on the periphery of humanity, but men still do not regard themselves as
gendered beings, and they tend to consider any topic dealing with women as irrel-
evant to them, despite the fact that most men live with women and all men live
among women. The paradigm shift from androcentric to gender-neutral and
gender-inclusive models of humanity is still incomplete, in that women have taken
it more to heart than have men.
In some ways, the existence of various programmes devoted to the study of
'minorities' -women, blacks, native Americans, gay and lesbian people, etc. - is an
important development, given that all these perspectives were almost completely
ignored in the scholarship that dominated the academic world several decades
ago. But the existence of these programmes and disciplines, taught mainly by
members of these groups for members of these groups, also leaves the dominant
group free to continue on its course, its consciousness unchanged by the informa-
tion conveyed in books written by and classes taught by members of the 'minority'
groups. Therefore, intellectually and ideologically, the problem of human gen-
deredness and other human diversities is not solved by developing specialized
disciplines, taught by and for the various 'minorities', that can then be ignored by
the dominant groups.
For these reasons, I have severely restricted my acceptance of speaking engage-
ments on 'women and Buddhism', 'Buddhism and feminism', or even 'Buddhism
and gender'. Instead, I offer to speak on 'Buddhism and social justice' and use
gender issvies as an example of social justice. I find that my audiences are no longer
comprised mainly of women, which is what I want, given that many women are well
educated on gender issues while most men are not. It is no longer acceptable for
gender issues to be isolated from other social justice issues and considered a
special case, which is what often happens when the focus is on women, nor is there
any justification for continuing to marginalize women's studies and feminist
theology as special interests.3
At this point, both because of the success of women's studies in illuminating
women's lives and because of the peripheral role women's studies still plays in the
academy, I suggest that the time is ripe to regard our main enterprise as gender
studies, with women's studies as a sub-discipline within gender studies, rather than
an independent discipline. I think there was a time when women's religious lives
were so unknown and unresearched that focusing on women, almost exclusively

3. For example, let us look at the literature on Engaged Buddhism. Two major anthologies,
Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (Queen and King: 1996), and Engaged
Buddhism in (he West (Queen 1999), discuss a wide range of social issues and Buddhist movements

19
 RITA M. GROSS

and to the exclusion of men, was warranted. I also think that there was a time when
gender studies would have overwhelmed women's studies if we had tried to move
toward a greater emphasis on gender studies. But I do not think that is the case
anymore. Furthermore, intellectually, the main issue always was gender and its
unacknowledged role in human affairs, not women. Because gender was not
acknowledged and recognized as a fact present in all human societies, women were
ignored. Focusing on women corrects part of the problem, but it does not correct
the failure to integrate knowledge about women into knowledge about humanity,
which is what a complete paradigm shift in our models of humanity would require.
I make this suggestion for both intellectual and strategic reasons. I believe we will
be more successful at achieving major goals of women's studies and feminist
theology in the long run if we conceptualize our work as part of the project of
gender studies. We want what we have discovered to become general knowledge so
that it can have society-wide impact. We cannot achieve that goal by remaining an
enclave that attracts mainly women. Men need to think about gender and become
more familiar with their own genderedness, as well as with the content of women's
studies and feminist theology. The project of gender studies, with women's studies
as one component of the field, is more likely to achieve these goals than is a con-
tinued emphasis on women's studies in isolation. We need to do whatever it takes
to undermine the assumption that 'gender' is a women's issue, is another term that
can be used interchangeably with 'women'. Until then, the paradigm shift in
models of humanity that is our most basic agenda will still be incomplete.

AGENDAS IN THE PRESENT: UNDERSTANDING THE DISTINC-

TION BETWEEN WOMEN'S STUDIES AND FEMINIST THEOLOGY
In the foregoing section of this essay, I have repeatedly used the phrase 'women's
studies in religion and feminist theology'. This is because I consider 'women's
studies in religion' and 'feminist theology' to be two distinct academic enterprises
that should not be confused or conflated, though they are related. The relation-
ship between these two subdisciplines reduplicates the relationship between
religious studies and theology, between the descriptive and the normative tasks in
the discussion of religion, a topic over which too much ink has been spilled. I have
contributed to that deluge of ink largely to argue that the same scholar can partic-
ipate in both religious studies and theology without confusion or self deception
(see Gross 1993: 305-17). I have also argued that there can be no hard and fast

that address these movements. There is no discussion of feminist issues in Buddhism in either
volume, though the book about Asian Engaged Buddhism does contain a chapter on the
movement to restore the nuns' ordination in those Asian lineages in which it has been lost, cer-
tainly not the only issue for Buddhist women. My work is mentioned several times in the volume
Engaged Buddhism in the West. I am identified as a feminist theologian, but my work on feminism
is not cited. Instead, several articles I have written on Buddhism and ecology are mis-identified as
Buddhist approaches to the population problem. Clearly, for these editors, gender issues, espe-
cially those regarding equity for women, are a separate conceptual category. It is quite common
to regard war and peace, racism, economic justice, and the environment as 'real' social issues
and to think of gender issues as less central to the project of social justice.

20
 WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN RELIGION
division between these two disciplines because the scholar's standpoint always
affects her selection of subject material and findings, at least to some extent, and
because there is no 'neutral no place' from which the scholar can observe and
report on religion (see Gross 2000: 163-77).
In my view, unfortunately, the distinction between the normative and descriptive
aspects of discussions about religion is drawn too tightly and too sharply concern-
ing the links between religious studies and theology, while the distinctions between
women's studies in religion and feminist theology are drawn in an overly lax
manner and the two are often confused. Simply studying women's religious lives is
often regarded as a feminist project rather than a necessary and ideologically
neutral (though not methodologically neutral) component of religious studies.
Blurring this distinction often weakens the case for women's studies while doing
little to promote the cause of feminism.
For the sake of brevity, one could say that women's studies is primarily an
academic method that has to do with including all the relevant data, while
feminism or feminist theology encompasses a social vision that critiques and recon-
structs one's own religion, culture, or academic environment. One tends towards
the descriptive and the other towards the normative. Both of them grew out of
what is usually called 'the second wave of feminism' and its attendant paradigm
shift in models of humanity. But if there is any place in religious studies where the
distinction between descriptive and normative needs to be understood and
honoured, it is in matters dealing with women and religion.4
Paradoxically, the connection between women's studies in religion and feminist
theology makes this distinction crucial. The agenda simply to study women's reli-
gious lives, to insist that information about women is crucial to any account of any
religions, still engenders hostility and dismissal from some who regard the study of
women and religion as a political rather than an intellectual enterprise. But the
study of women's religious lives is not, by itself, a feminist project because it does
not entail making judgements abovit the information that is discovered in one's
scholarship. It only entails the judgement that, because women are human beings,
one cannot study any religious situation adequately if one neglects or refuses to
collect information about women. After the emergence of the discipline of
women's studies in religion, it is inexcusable for any scholar to be hostile to that
endeavour, given that we now have countless demonstrations of how seriously one
can misunderstand a religion if one does not notice its women (see Gross 1996:
66-79). I would contend that it is strategically advantageous to be able to claim that
a scholar's personal adoption of a feminist lifestyle and belief system is completely
irrelevant to whether or not he needs to pay attention to women's studies in
religion in his descriptive scholarship. Though women as subject matter may have
initially been discovered by feminists, the data concerning women as subject
matter is relevant to all scholars, not to feminists alone. We cannot make that point

4. I first emphasized this distinction in the first methodological appendix of Buddhism afler
Patriarrhr. 291-304. My book Feminism and Religion: An Introduction (1996), one of the few books
genuinely about women and religion, not women and Christianity, is bnilt on this distinction and
developing the distinction is central to the book's first chapter.

21
 RITA M. GROSS

too often or too forcefully. Therefore, it is crucial to distinguish carefully between

those aspects of our work that fall within the domain of women's studies in religion
and those that fall within the domain of feminist critique and reconstruction of our
traditions - feminist theology.
The distinction between women's studies and a feminist critique is crucial for
another reason that is more relevant to those of us who work with topics concern-
ing women and religion than for others in the field. Many of us who do scholarship
regarding women's studies in religion are also feminists but, as scholars, we have to
be careful not to project our feminist values onto the religious and cultural situa-
tions of other times and places. These are complex issues, and most of us have
undoubtedly experienced gratitude that we do not live in some of the times and
places in which we study women's religious lives. Nevertheless, it is anachronistic to
criticize ancient Israelite culture, for example, for not meeting our expectations
regarding equitable relations between the sexes. It is even more problematic, espe-
cially in impersonal and public contexts, to preach to people of cultures and
religions not our own about what their standards for relations between women and
men should be. Such practices easily become nai've and arrogant. Given that we
share the world with those who live in contemporary religions and cultures that
feminists may find difficult, I regard the proper division of labour between
women's studies in religion and feminist critiques to be crucial, especially in cross-
cultural studies. Western feminists have done considerable damage rushing to
criticize cultural situations they do not understand well.
For this reason, I have long advocated thorough descriptive study, seeking to
understand a religious doctrine or practice as insiders would understand and
justify it, as a prerequisite to making any normative comments about that doctrine
or practice. Quick condemnation of unfamiliar beliefs and practices is one of the
great pitfalls of cross-cultural studies. The point of such study is not to feel smug
and superior. The ground rules of cross-cultural studies require suspension of
judgement at first, until one is thoroughly familiar with the situation being studied.
One must first understand why such doctrines and practices exist and what
purposes they serve according to the viewpoint of those who hold those doctrines
and follow these practices. Empathy is the most critical tool for engaging in cross-
cultural studies in ways that do not create further mutual entrenchment and scorn.
It must be applied in all cases, even the most unsavoury, before any normative
comments would be appropriate.
If one does not jump to conclusions about how certain religious or cultural phe-
nomena are experienced by projecting from one's own values, but takes more time
to reflect on the practice, some surprising conclusions may result. Some practices
that seem undesirable may turn out not to be as completely disadvantageous to
women as they might seem at first. For example, arranged marriages can protect
women from the need for self-display, the indignities of the singles bar and the
dangers of date rape. Polygyny can provide female companionship and help with
child care. Furthermore, every woman who wants to marry can be married in a
polygynous culture. Dress codes that require modesty can free women from
needing to display themselves as sex objects competing to attract the male gaze if
they are to find partners. These are rationales for such practices that would be

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 WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN RELIGION

made by many women who live with arranged marriages, polygyny and modest
dress codes - conditions that would drive many western women, both feminist and
non-feminist, mad. But their explanations and justifications have cogency, and
understanding them is certainly part of the task of women's studies in religion.
However, certain religious doctrines and practices are difficult to explain even
after employing considerable empathy. If one chooses to continue one's reflections
into the realm of evaluation and normative comments, certain precautions should
be taken. First of all, it should be made clear that one is switching hats, from being
a women's studies scholar to being a feminist theologian or ethicist. As I have
argued many times, I do not agree that it is impossible for one person to fill both
roles, but it is important not to confuse them in one's own mind or in one's work.
Second, it is far easier and more straightforward to make normative claims about a
tradition or a culture in which one participates than about another tradition or
culture. Nevertheless, on ethical grounds, feminists and others sometimes do expe-
rience an imperative to speak out against certain practices, common in a culture
other than one's own, that cause great human suffering. There is no alternative but
to acquiesce to complete relativism, a moral position that is never adequate.
The major question then becomes one of what Buddhists would call 'skilful
means'. What actions or statements would actually alleviate the situation about
which I am concerned, as opposed to simply allowing me to feel self-righteous and
relieved that I have made a statement? In particular, cross-cultural denunciations
from first world countries and former colonists probably only entrench the
situation further. Then resisting changes in women's situations becomes part of
national pride and resistance to westernization. It is also important to avoid inflam-
matory rhetoric and language. It is less divisive to talk about traditional African
genital operations than to talk about African genital mutilation, for example, and
probably more effective. One must also evaluate whether quiet support, both emo-
tional and financial, of indigenous women who are fighting for change in their
own cultures might not be the most effective action we could take.
In the context of one's own culture or religion, the situation is much more
straightforward. Insiders to a tradition certainly are appropriate spokespeople for
that tradition and architects of its future. As such, they cannot be faulted for not
having the appropriate credentials for evaluating the tradition. Some of the most
creative, interesting and exciting work that has been done on women and religion,
or on religious thought in general for that matter, involves the critiques and recon-
structions of religious traditions done by feminist commentators and theologians,
most of them women.
The obstacles a feminist theologian is more likely to face have to do with the
arguments between theology and religious studies on the part of those involved
professionally in the study of religion. Normative work is not considered to be
'scholarship' by many in the field of religious studies. I am reminded of the remark
that came back to me regarding an early article I wrote on Hindu goddesses as a
resource for western attempts to re-image the deity as female (Gross 1978: 269-91):
'It's a very interesting article, but that is not scholarship.' It seems that if one thinks
about and thinks with certain data, rather than only reporting on them, one
crosses over a certain line between 'scholarship' and 'speculation' which makes

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 RITA M. GROSS

one suspect and untrustworthy as a scholar in the evaluations of some. Another

problem facing those who do normative work is that, except at seminaries, finding
employment can be difficult. And seminaries may well be reluctant to hire feminist
theologians and almost always refuse to hire non-Christian theologians, whether
feminist or not.
Here too, a clear distinction between women's studies in religion and feminist
theology may help. Many of us who have done feminist theology also do purely
descriptive work which we regard as a necessary foundation for feminist commen-
tary. One can hardly do good normative work if one is not thoroughly informed
about the tradition one is critiquing and reconstructing. To do normative, evalua-
tive work without that basis would be sheer speculation, but such exercises do not
usually characterize the work of academic scholars who also do academic theology.
When attempts are made to undercut and dismiss our work because of its norma-
tive dimensions, we can reply not only by arguing for the dignity, necessity and
inevitability of a normative dimension in scholarly work. We can also rightly point
to the fact that we have thoroughly researched women's religious lives, experi-
ences, and thought, using the standard methodologies employed by religious
studies to engage in women's studies in religion.

WHERE SHOULD WE GO? EMERGING ISSUES IN WOMEN'S

STUDIES IN RELIGION AND IN FEMINIST THEOLOGY
The dominant issue for women's studies in religion and for feminist theology is, in
my view, the extent to which the whole field of women and religion has become
identified with and collapsed into Christian feminist theology. There are two com-
ponents to this problem. One is the extent to which scholars who may study women
and religion no longer identify with academic groups and publications that
specialize in women and religion, especially if those scholars primarily study a non-
western religion. The other is the extent to which feminist theology is assumed to
be Christian feminist theology, which mirrors and parallels the way in which
theology and Christian theology are confused in the academy at large. One would
think that only Christians carry on normative discussions, to observe the con-
figuration of many forums for the study and discussion of religion.
The frustration to which this situation can lead is evident in the comment of a
colleague, who is a Buddhist and scholar of Buddhism, in her response to a recent
roundtable discussion which I wrote on this topic:

I have participated for many years in the same groups and gatherings Rita
mentions. Like Rita, I have drifted away from feminist theology activities
because I find little of interest going on there, despite the fact that I
consider my work to fall, in some sense, under that rubric. I can confirm
Rita's experience of passive exclusion from these groups, manifested in
their offering little of interest to feminist scholars involved in non-Western,
and especially in non-Christian religions. (Burford 2000: 85)

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 WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN RELIGION

Equally telling is a comment by the editors of the volume Is There a Future for
Feminist Theology?

Although we have included diversity in terms of theoretical and method-

ological issues, what this volume lacks . . . is any dialogue with non-Western
contexts. This lack of ongoing engagement by feminist theology, and
gender theory itself, with experience outside Western culture artificially
limits the issues of gender and religion. From our perspective, this is the
major task for the next millennium. The traditional dichotomy between
East and West, a meta-narrative of a past age, needs to be dissolved to allow
the vast plurality of global experience to take center stage. (Sawyer and
Collier 1999: 24)

Thus, at least in the North American world with which I am most familiar, the
movement to study and discuss women and religion, broadly conceived, has been
collapsed, for the most part, into feminist theology, and feminist theology has
become almost exclusively Christian feminist theology. Those scholars who focus
on descriptive accounts of women and religion, especially in the rich fields of Asian
and Middle Eastern religions, have abandoned primary identification with the
field of women and religion or gender and religion for relevant scholarly fora in
their area studies associations. Unfortunately, most of the scholars and theologians
who continue to think of themselves as involved in the field of gender and religion
usually are not conversant with the scholarship produced by these experts on non-
western and non-monotheistic religions, which weakens their work. When the
agenda is specifically feminist theology, rather than women's studies in religion,
this narrow focus intensifies and creates even more problems. As I have already
indicated, many theologians, feminist or otherwise, assume that the theological
arena is, by definition, Christian. They do not study or refer to scholarship about
non-Christian traditions, such as Hinduism or Islam, even if it is on a topic about
which they are concerned, such as imagery for the deity. Nor are they familiar with
the theological work of their colleagues in other traditions.
I have long lamented these Eurocentric' and Christian-centred biases in feminist
theology and, to a lesser extent, among those who identify as scholars of gender
and religion. (There is plenty of good scholarship on gender and religion in non-
western contexts; it just is not being taken seriously by many western theoreticians
of gender and religion.) Given the paradigm shift from less inclusive to more
inclusive models of humanity that was both the inspiration and the primary
achievement of the movement to study women and religion seriously, these
Eurocentric and Christian-centred tendencies are highly problematic and disap-
pointing. For a movement that based its raison d'etre on the need to include those
who had formerly been excluded - women - to limit its discussions to European or
North-American women and Christian women is inexcusable.

5. The term 'Eurocentric' is not used to distinguish European from North American thought,
but rather to differentiate between symbol systems and religious teachings that derive from a
non-European source, such as Asia or Africa, and those with a European intellectual ancestry,
including mainstream North American thought.

25
 RITA M. GROSS

Thus, feminist theology, especially, needs to redirect itself. It needs to return to

its original vision of inclusivity, with the understanding that inclusivity goes beyond
Christianity or Europe and its cultural derivatives. That is to say, an emphasis on
diversity, which is already quite common in the feminist theology movement, must
include concern with religious diversity if its alleged concern with diversity is to
mean anything. Promoting intra-Christian diversity does not lead to attention to
religious diversity and does not provide policies and stances that would be inviting
to people of non-Christian religions. Nor is it adequate to consider that one's
efforts to be religiously diverse have been successful if there is some token inclu-
sion of Judaism and Goddess-worshipping members of the feminist spirituality
movement while Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and members of various small-scale
and ethnic traditions are ignored, find nothing of interest in feminist theological
fora, and feel excluded. Failing that, the movement needs to stop calling itself 'the
feminist theology movement' and start labelling itself honestly as the 'Christian
feminist theology movement'. It would be difficult to over-estimate how irritating I
find it to read of yet another book or conference on 'feminist theology' that clearly
is concerned only \\ith Christian feminist theology (see Gross 2001 a: 83-101).
I would also like to see more communication between those interested in
descriptive accounts of women's religions, especially in non-western religions, and
those interested in theoretical issues surrounding gender and feminist theology. In
particular, I would like to see fora devoted to discussing gender and religion or
feminist theology explicitly invite specialists on women and gender in non-western
contexts to their meetings, because now there is little to suggest, say, to an expert
on Hindu women's rituals that she or he might want to read a paper at the Women
and Religion section of the American Academy of Religion, for example. Such
exchanges would be mutually beneficial, but they would be especially helpful in
overcoming the parochialism concerning gender and religion, women and
religion, and feminist theology that can plague English-speaking discussions of
these topics.

CONCLUSION
Though, in a certain sense, I have discussed the past, present, and future of our
endeavours as scholars of women's studies or gender studies and as feminist the-
ologians, I have had more to say, in each case, about future directions than about
present accomplishments. Concerning the significant achievement of a paradigm
shift in models of humanity, I suggest that we solidify that achievement by taking
the next logical step and make our major focus gender a\\A religion, seeing women's
studies in religion as one aspect of that larger project. We should also do every-
thing we can to insist that these materials be included in 'general' textbooks and
courses, rather than limited to contexts for gender studies or women's studies. To
safeguard women's studies and gender studies from politically and ideologically
motivated attacks, I suggest that we clearly differentiate women's studies or gender
studies from feminist theology, that we clearly differentiate our descriptive work
from our normative work, even though they are intertwined. Others may disagree
with us about the validity or results of feminist theology, but there can be no

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 WOMEN'S STUDIES AND GENDER IN RELIGION

grounds for disagreeing with the need for gender studies and women's studies as
academic disciplines. Finally, to achieve 'truth in advertising', we need either to
label what many now call 'feminist theology' as 'Christian feminist theology' or to
foster religious diversity in our discussions of feminist theology. Clearly, I prefer the
latter option. As part of that endeavour, I also would suggest that we put more
effort into bringing together scholars of women and gender in non-western
contexts with those who study gender and religion or do feminist theology in
western contexts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burford, Grace G. (2000) 'Issues of Inclusion and Exclusion in Feminist Theology',/ourwa/o/
Feminist Studies in Religion 16:2: 84-90.
Gross, Rita M. (1977) 'Androcentrism and Androgyny in the Methodology of History of Reli-
gions', in Rita Gross (ed.) Beyond Androcentrism: New Essays on Women and Religion,
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