Religion is introduced in this article as a social sphere that mirrors and addresses basic cultural gender codes just like any other social field. Taking this perspective, religion is understood to be part of the social life-world that is structured by a commonly shared system of social categorisations and typifications. Consequently, religious agents experience and act in the religious sphere according to these general patterns of cultural meaning as they do in any other part of their life-world. Against this backdrop, the worldwide plurality of religious gender sociality can be approached in a distinct way. Accordingly, this article focuses on a select theoretical approach: Following Shmuel Eisenstadt's multiple modernities paradigm I conceive the plurality of religious gender cultures as an expression of multiple religiosities that are embedded within diverse structural and institutional environments. The key theoretical dimension of this approach is the social fabric of basic cultural codes. The central questions are: to what extent does the multiple modernities perspective facilitate a gender-conscious approach to cultural comparisons and how can we conceive of multiple religiosities as gendered social realities? These questions affect epistemological considerations of how contextually contingent historical experiences and cultural backgrounds can be theoretically considered. Empirically, I refer to select discourses of gender relations in Arab-Muslim societies against the backdrop of European bourgeois gender philosophies that are based on dimorphism. In addition, Islamic feminism is considered as a third example of multiple gendered religiosities.
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