Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Despite the classic patriarchy of the Roman Catholic church, American Catholic nuns entered into patriarchal bargains that latently gained them access to resources and status within the system. By means of educational advancement and professional careers, encouraged by the male hierarchy as necessary to performing the works of the church, nuns gained both informal power in the system and an awareness of their disadvantaged position. This article analyzes the shifts that have occurred in these bargains during the past 40 years in terms of the submerged networks of feminist consciousness that have existed in Catholic convents for decades. The article concludes with a description of the current crisis occurring within religious orders as they experience a decline in membership and rapidly increasing median ages of members.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbott, Walter M., S. J. 1966. The documents of Vatican II. New York: America Press.

Carpenter, Teresa. 1980. Courage and pain: Women who love God and defy their churches. Redbook 155:149-56.

Collier, J. 1974. Women in politics. In Women, culture and society, edited by M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 1977. Out of the cloister: The study of organizational dilemmas. Austin University of Texas Press.

Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 1978. Catholic nuns: Unwitting feminists. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest Social Science Association, August, San Francisco, CA.

Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 1993. Women in a vanishing cloister: Organizational decline in Catholic religious orders in the U.S.. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Henslin, Julia A. 1983. In transition: A study of women religious administrators in nontraditional roles. Ph.D. diss. Fordham University, Bronx, NY.

Johnson, K. A. 1983. Women, the family and peasant revolution in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Joseph, S. M. , et al. 1980. New ministries of women religious: Role conflict and coping styles. Chicago: Religious Formation Center.

10.

Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1988. Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender & Society 2:274-90.

11.

Kibria, N. 1990. Power, patriarchy, and gender conflict in the Vietnamese immigrant community. Gender & Society. 4:9-24.

12.

La Magdaleine, Donald. 1986. U.S. Catholic Church-related jobs as dual labor markets: A speculative inquiry. Review of Religious Research 27:315-27.

13.

Melucci, Alberto. 1985. The symbolic challenge of contemporary movements. Social Research 52:789-816.

14.

Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the heart. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

15.

Meyers, Bertrande , 1965. Sisters from the twenty-first century. New York: Sheed and Ward.

16.

Neal, Marie Augusta, S. N. D. 1984. Catholic sisters in transition: From the 1960's to the 1980's. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier.

17.

Neal, Marie Augusta, S. N. D. 1990. From nuns to sisters: An expanding vocation. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Nine Publications.

18.

Official Catholic Directory. 1950. New York: P. J. Kennedy.

19.

Official Catholic Directory. 1990. New York: P. J. Kennedy.

20.

Schoenherr, Richard , and Annette Sorensen. 1982. Social change in religious organizations: Consequences of the clergy decline in the U.S. Catholic Church. Sociological Analysis 43:52-71.

21.

Schweickert, Jeanne. 1987. Who's entering religious life? Chicago: National Conference of Religious Vocation Directors.

22.

Thompson, Margaret. 1986. Discovering foremothers: Sisters, society, and the American Catholic experience. U.S. Catholic Historian 5:273-90.

23.

Wallace, Ruth. 1992. They call her pastor. Albany: State University of New York Press.

24.

Weaver, Mary Jo. 1986. Inside outsiders: Sisters and the women's movement. In New Catholic women: A contemporary challenge to traditional religious authority. New York: Harper & Row.

25.

Wenzel, Kristan. 1990. The impact of religiousness on retirement expectations among women religious in the U.S. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, October, Boston.

26.

Wittberg, Patricia. 1989. Non-ordained workers in the Catholic church: Power and mobility among American nuns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28:148-61.

27.

Wolf, M. 1972. Women and the family in rural Taiwan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

PATRIARCHAL BARGAINS AND LATENT AVENUES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY:

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References