Women's Experiences in Interreligious Leadership

Abstract

Women are providing significant leadership across the interfaith movement in the US context. While their leadership is increasingly acknowledged, this article will explore how women experience interreligious leadership. What are the challenges and opportunities they face? How do they view and engage their work and their networks? What is the vision they hold for transformed and transformative interreligious relations? How is women's interreligious leadership both an indicator of and a means for contributing to gender justice? This article will feature primary sources – leaders living in the United States and serving in local, national, and global positions with impact in all spheres – along with analysis from secondary sociological and theological sources. Thus, this article will contribute a rare first-person assessment of women's interreligious leadership to a growing, much-needed body of research on this topic.