Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women's entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women's religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women's formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use survey data to test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women's formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women's ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women's religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context.

中文翻译：

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撒哈拉以南地区妇女的宗教权威：赋权和依赖性的辩证法。

西方关于宗教与性别的奖学金已经极大地关注了妇女在各种宗教传统和教派中担任领导角色的经历。但是，人们对妇女在发展环境中的宗教权威和领导能力的动态知之甚少，特别是在撒哈拉以南非洲，一个宗教信仰多样而强大的地区。这项研究结合了独特而丰富的数据，在莫桑比克主要为基督教的环境中研究了妇女的正式宗教权威。我首先使用调查数据来检验关于不同教派女性正式领导的普遍性和模式的假设。然后，我将通过对女性行为的途径和后果的见解来支持和扩展定量结果。从定性数据提升到正式的会众权威。分析表明，在这种不断发展的背景下，妇女的宗教权威如何既反抗又重新确立了宗教市场的性别约束和更广泛的性别意识形态。