Prior research indicates that ritual can be a source of social solidarity by signaling trustworthiness and group commitment. A separate line of research expects domestic violence against women to be more common in societies with post-marital residence at the husband’s birthplace (i.e. patrilocality). Thus, we hypothesized that when wives are able to construct strong bonds with the female members of their communities through solidarity-building rituals, they gain social support capable of inhibiting violence, leading to lower overall levels of domestic violence--especially in patrilocal societies. Results indicated that certain types of women-centered rituals were associated with lower levels of sexual and domestic violence; however, we found inconsistent effects according to patrilocal residence. Women-centered rituals were not found to be associated with beliefs about the husband’s prerogative to punish and dominate his spouse, and patrilocality did not contribute to the effects we found.
This collection of essays arose from the conference "Sex on the Margins: Navigating Religious, Social, and Natural Scientific Models of Sex Differences," February 24-26, 2017, at Boston University. Scholars examined how our growing knowledge of sex, gender, and sexual diversity impacts binary models of sex that continue to hold sway in most religious and natural scientific examinations of human nature, including their practical application in medical approaches to differently sexed and gendered bodies. The authors call for a nuanced, interdisciplinary approach to sex difference which respects and protects minorities without eliding statistically significant binary patterns of human experience.
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