Paper Title
Gender Roles and Religious Participation among Sikh Women in North Carolina
Location
Room 221, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
Start Date
March 2016
End Date
March 2016
Abstract
This paper relies on extended ethnographic research at The Sikh Gurudwara of North Carolina in Durham, North Carolina, where I have been engaging in participant-observation and conducting semi-structured interviews for the past year. Within my broader project examining how transnational Sikhs construct and negotiate their religious identities, gender roles and issues related to women’s religious participation and ritual leadership have emerged as significant among both first- and second-generation members of this community. Both men and women describe how gender expectations may diverge in practice from Sikh ideals associated with gender equality. A number of my informants emphasize that although gender roles within the Sikh community in North Carolina are influenced by living in the United States, they are still shaped by these individuals’ South Asian cultural heritage and its traditionally patriarchal norms. Drawing on my observations, as well as individual narratives and interview texts, my paper offers insights into how Sikh Americans are negotiating multiple identities in their transnational contexts and argues that the complex opinions over gender equality in Sikhism can be indexed to the different stages of translating religious identity. In this paper I also devote attention to the impact of age on perceptions about gender and religion, as younger Sikhs typically express the belief that equality should not only be a reality, but is also likely to be achieved, while older Sikhs often observe that gender equality is the goal, but are less optimistic that significant changes in gender dynamics will occur in their lifetimes because most people are too firmly entrenched in the patriarchal culture of their homeland.
Gender Roles and Religious Participation among Sikh Women in North Carolina
Room 221, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
This paper relies on extended ethnographic research at The Sikh Gurudwara of North Carolina in Durham, North Carolina, where I have been engaging in participant-observation and conducting semi-structured interviews for the past year. Within my broader project examining how transnational Sikhs construct and negotiate their religious identities, gender roles and issues related to women’s religious participation and ritual leadership have emerged as significant among both first- and second-generation members of this community. Both men and women describe how gender expectations may diverge in practice from Sikh ideals associated with gender equality. A number of my informants emphasize that although gender roles within the Sikh community in North Carolina are influenced by living in the United States, they are still shaped by these individuals’ South Asian cultural heritage and its traditionally patriarchal norms. Drawing on my observations, as well as individual narratives and interview texts, my paper offers insights into how Sikh Americans are negotiating multiple identities in their transnational contexts and argues that the complex opinions over gender equality in Sikhism can be indexed to the different stages of translating religious identity. In this paper I also devote attention to the impact of age on perceptions about gender and religion, as younger Sikhs typically express the belief that equality should not only be a reality, but is also likely to be achieved, while older Sikhs often observe that gender equality is the goal, but are less optimistic that significant changes in gender dynamics will occur in their lifetimes because most people are too firmly entrenched in the patriarchal culture of their homeland.
