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Criticisms within Women's and Gender Studies (WGS)[edit]
Religion and Spirituality[edit]
According to Karlyn Crowley, a contributing author for Rethinking Women's and Gender Studies, rarely are issues related to spirituality and religion seriously addressed, which Crowley argues can lead to multiple consequences that impact the field.[1] In her chapter titled Secularity, she observes that the resulting dynamic is one of "bifurcation" where secularity is privileged as being more progressive. Crowley claims, "By not interrogating these categories of the good and the bad religions, the secular and the religious, and the racial, cultural, and colonialist impulses at work, WGS often succumbs to two main secular narratives: (1) spirituality/religion is seemingly absent or neglected while signifying certain normative assumptions; (2) spirituality/religion is placed into easy binarisms and dismissed" (2012, 248).[1] The dismissals and unexamined presuppositions that Crowley describes also reveals what she notes as leading to barriers. These barriers, she argues, prevents one from at least engaging with ideas that could potentially inspire different ways of approaching issues connected to social change and to social justice.
Considering these critiques, Crowley discusses the work of AnaLouise Keating for the purpose of examining how the exploration of spirituality and religion in dialogues, debates, and other forms of exchanges within Women's Studies, can encourage more constructive, productive, and meaningful engagement. Cited by Crowley, Keating states:
Unlike "New Age" versions of spirituality, which focus almost exclusively on the personal (so that the goals become increased wealth, a "good life," or other solipsistic materialistic terms), spiritual activism begins with the personal yet moves outward, acknowledging our radical interconnectedness. This is spirituality for social change, spirituality that recognizes the many difference among us yet insists on our commonalities and uses these commonalities as catalysts for transformation. What a contrast: while identity politics requires holding onto specific categories of identity, spiritual activism demands that we let them go( qtd. in Crowley 252)[1]
Keating reveals that current discourses in Women's Studies appear to remain within boundaries of one's identity, such as that of one's racial, political, social, religious, and/or economic backgrounds. Keating considers the approaches espoused within different spiritual and religious ideologies that promote the interconnectedness of humanity as concepts that can provide solutions that enable the flourishing of the ecosystem and of humanity. However, as Keating and Crowley suggest without seriously considering issues related to spirituality and religion within Women's Studies, one is limited to unexamined presuppositions that lead to the dismissal of the unknown and of making limited progress in social change and in social justice.