Gender, Religion and Politics : Questioning the Secular and Sacred

Gender, Religion and Politics addresses the ways in which gender politics constitute and are in turn constituted by religious and nationalist discourses and political ideologies.

The authors expertly argue that gender is a key determinant in structuring identities, collectivities and social relations at all levels, that notions of national identity are predicated on fixed ideas of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, which in turn dictate the 'appropriate' behaviour of the men and women of the nation. The legitimation of recent conflicts in terms of women's liberation from oppressive religious or political regimes carries within it the assumptions that modernity is epitomised by the conferral on women of equal rights and full citizenship, and that modernity is synonymous with secularism.

The book will bring together these assumptions in a compelling argument that makes transparent the central role of gender as a constitutive factor in, nationalist discourses, state formation, and understandings of citizenship.